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THE 



LITERARY CHARACTER; 

OR THE HISTORY OF 

MEN OF GENIUS, 

jfraton: from ifmr ofon $zdm%$ aitb €onfmion$ 
LITEEAEY MISCELLANIES; 

AND AN INQUIRY INTO 

THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 
By ISAAC DISRAELI. 



J± NEW EDITION, 

EDITED BY HIS SON, 

THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, 

CHANCELLOR OF HEE MAJESTY'S EXCHEQUER. 



LONDON: 
EOUTLEDGE, WARNES, AND ROUTLEDGE, 

FARRINGDON STREET. 
NEW YORK : 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 

1859. 



,251 



LONDON : 

SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 

COVENT GARDEN. 






r 



i 

i PREFACE. 



The following Preface was prefixed to an Edition of the 
author's Miscellaneous Works in 1840. They were comprised 
in a thick 8vo volume, and included the Calamities and 
Quarrels oe Authors, now published separately. This 
Preface is of interest for the expression of the author's own 
view of these works. 

This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of 
our vernacular literature. Now collected together, they offer 
an unity of design, and afford to the general reader and to 
the student of classical antiquity some initiation into our 
national Literature. It is presumed also, that they present 
materials for thinking not solely on literary topics ; authors 
and books are not alone here treated of, — a comprehensive view 
of human nature necessarily enters into the subject from the 
diversity of the characters portrayed, through the gradations 
of their faculties, the influence of their tastes, and those 
incidents of their lives prompted by their fortunes or their 
passions. This present volume, with its brother " Curiosities 
oe Literature," now constitute a body of reading which 
may awaken knowledge in minds only seeking amusement, 
and refresh the deeper studies of the learned by matters not 
unworthy of their curiosity. 

The Literary Character has been an old favourite 
with many of my contemporaries departed or now living, 
who have found it respond to their own emotions. 

The Miscellanies are literary amenities, should they be 
found to deserve the title, constructed on that principle early 
adopted by me, of interspersing facts with speculation. 



vi Preface. 

The Inquiry into the Literary and Political 
Character oe James the First has surely corrected 
some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some 
obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. 
It is a satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of 
this tract, that while some competent judges have considered 
the " evidence irresistible," a material change has occurred in 
the tone of most writers. The subject presented an occasion 
to exhibit a minute picture of that age of transition in our 
national history. 

The titles of Calamities oe Authors and Quarrels oe 
Authors do not wholly designate the works, which include a 
considerable portion of literary history. 

Public favour has encouraged the republication of these 
various works, which often referred to, have long been difficult 
to procure. It has been deferred from time to time with the 
intention of giving the subjects a more enlarged investigation ; 
but I have delayed the task till it cannot be performed. One 
of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate 
organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,* — a 
disorder which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no 
physician by his experience can expound ; so much remains 
concerning the frame of man unrevealed to man ! 

In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. 
My unfinished labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. 
In a joyous heat I wander no longer through the wide circuit 
before me. The " strucken deer" has the sad privilege to 
weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid 
those far-distant woods where once he sought to range. 

* I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary brothers. 
When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed, there 
appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are the 
reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches which 
subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words, arranged 
in straight lines as in a printed book ; the monosyllables are often legible. 
This is the process of a few seconds. It is remarkable that the usual 
power of the eye is not injured or diminished for distant objects, while 
those near are clouded over. 



Preface. vii 

Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from 
all mental labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen 
and the book, these works, notwithstanding, have received 
many important corrections, having been read over to me 
with critical precision. 

Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant 
hope, nor a present consolation ; and to Her who has so 
often lent to me the light of her eyes, the intelligence of her 
Yoice, and the careful work of her hand, the author must 
ever owe "the debt immense" of paternal gratitude. 

London, May, 1840. 



CONTENTS. 



LITEEAEY CHAEACTEE. 
CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art . . . 11 

CHAPTER II. 

Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves. — Matter-of-fact 
men, and men of wit. — The political economists. — Of those who 
abandon their studies. — Men in office. — The arbiters of public 
opinion. — Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity . 14 

CHAPTER III. 

Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius. — Their habits and 
pursuits analogous. — The nature of their genius is similar in their 
distinct works. — Shown by their parallel seras, and by a common 
end pursued by both 20 



CHAPTER IV. 

Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have an 
equal aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and education. — 
Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind. — The predisposition of 
genius. — A substitution for the white paper of Locke .... 24 

CHAPTER V. 

Youth of genius. — Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subse- 
quent actions. — Parents have another association of the man of 
genius than we. — Of genius, its first habits. — Its melancholy. — Its 



x Contents. 

PAGE 

reveries. — Its love of solitude. — Its disposition to repose. — Of a 
youth distinguished by his equals.— Feebleness of its first attempts. 
— Of genius not discoverable even in manhood. — The education of 
the youth may not be that of his genius. — An unsettled impulse, 
querulous till it finds its true occupation. — With some, curiosity as 
intense a faculty as invention. — What the youth first applies to is 
commonly his delight afterwards. — Facts of the decisive character 
of genius 31 

CHAPTER VI. 

The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculi- 
arities. — Their errors. — Their improvement from the neglect or con- 
tempt they incur. —The history of self-education in Moses Men- 
delssohn. — Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. — A 
remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his 
literary adviser. — Exhortation 55 

CHAPTER VII. 

Of the irritability of genius. — Genius in society often in a state of 
suffering. — Equality of temper more prevalent among men of let- 
ters. — Of the occupation of making a great name. — Anxieties of the 
most successful. — Of the inventors. — Writers of learning. — Writers 
of taste. — Artists 69 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The spirit of literature and the spirit of society. — The inventors. — 
Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius. — The no- 
tions of persons of fashion of men of genius. — The habitudes of 
the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society. — Study, 
meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius. — The dis- 
agreement between the men of the world and the literary character, 89 

CHAPTER IX. 

Conversations of men of genius. — Their deficient agreeableness may 
result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.— Slow- 
minded men not the dullest. — The conversationists not the ablest 
writers. — Their true excellence in conversation consists of associa- 
tions with their pursuits 99 



Contents, xi 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by pro- 
fession. — Its inconveniences 109 

CHAPTER XI. 

The meditations of Genius. — A work on the Art of Meditation not yet 
produced. — Predisposing the mind. — Imagination awakens imagina- 
tion. — Generating feelings by music. — Slight habits. — Darkness 
and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the 
vivacity of our conceptions. — The arts of memory. — Memory the 
foundation of genius. — Inventions by several to preserve their own 
moral and literary character. — And to assist their studies. — The 
meditations of genius depend on habit. — Of the night-time. — A 
day of meditation should precede a day of composition. — Works of 
magnitude from slight conceptions. — Of thoughts never written. — 
The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places. — Con- 
tinuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries. — Still- 
ness of meditation the first state of existence in genius . . . .116 

CHAPTER XII. 

The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling a waking 
dream distinct from reverie. — The ideal presence distinguished from 
the real presence. — The senses are really affected in the ideal world, 
proved by a variety of instances. — Of the rapture or sensation of 
deep study in art, science, and literature. — Of perturbed feelings, 
in delirium. — In extreme endurance of attention. — And in visionary 
illusions. — Enthusiasts in literature and art. — Of their self- 
immolations .... 136 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Of the jealousy of genius. — Jealousy often proportioned to the degree 
of genius. — A perpetual fever among authors and artists. — In- 
stances of its incredible excess among brothers and benefactors. — 
Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes the sufferer with- 
out its malignancy 154 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a 
deficiency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jealousy 
which induces men of genius to undervalue each other . . . .159 



xii Contents. 

CHAPTER XV. 

PAGE 

Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the nature 
of genius. — A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great 
designs. — The ancients openly claimed their own praise. — And 
several moderns. — An author knows more of his merits than his 
readers. — And less of his defects. — Authors versatile in their ad- 
miration and their malignity ' 162 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions attributed 
to domestic infelicities. — The home of the literary character should 
be the abode of repose and silence. — Of the father. — Of the 
mother. — Of family genius. — Men of genius not more respected than 
other men in their domestic circle. — The cultivators of science and 
art do not meet on equal terms with others, in domestic life. — Their 
neglect of those around them. — Often accused of imaginary crimes, 173 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The poverty of literary men. — Poverty, a relative quality. — Of the 
poverty of literary men in what degree desirable. — Extreme 
poverty. — Task-work. — Of gratuitous works. — A project to pro- 
vide against the worst state of poverty among literary men . . .186 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The matrimonial state of literature. — Matrimony said not to be well- 
suited to the domestic life of genius. — Celibacy a concealed cause of 
the early querulousness of men of genius. — Of unhappy unions. — 
Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a literary woman. 
— Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher female character. 
—A picture of a literary wife 198 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Literary friendships. — In early life. — Different from those of men of 
the world. — They suffer in unrestrained communication of their 
ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations. — Unity of feelings. — 
A sympathy not of manners but of feelings. — Admit of dissimilar 
characters. — Their peculiar glory. — Their sorrow 209 



Contents. xiii 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGE 

The literary and the personal character. — The personal dispositions of 
an author may he the reverse of those which appear in his writ- 
ings. — Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant authors. — 
Paradoxical appearances in the history of genius. — Why the cha- 
racter of the man may be opposite to that of his writings . . .217 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The man of letters. — Occupies an intermediate station between 
authors and readers. — His solitude described. — Often the father of 
genius. — Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity. — The perfect cha- 
racter of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc. — Their 
utility to authors and artists 226 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Literary old age still learning. — Influence of late studies in life. — Oc- 
cupations in advanced age of the literary character. — Of literary 
men who have died at their studies 238 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Universality of genius. — Limited notion of genius entertained by the 
ancients. — Opposite faculties act with diminished force. — Men of 
genius excel only in a single art 244 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Literature an avenue to glory. — An intellectual nobility not chime- 
rical, but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of various 
nations. — Local associations with the memory of the man of genius, 248 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors. — National 
tastes a source of literary prejudices. — True genius always the 
organ of its nation. — Master-writers preserve the distinct national 
character. — Grenius the organ of the state of the age. — Causes of 
its suppression in a people. — Often invented, but neglected. — The 
natural gradations of genius. — Men of genius produce their useful- 



xiv Contents. 



ness in privacy — The public mind is now the creation of the public 
writer. — Politicians affect to deny this principle. — Authors stand 
between the governors and the governed. — A view of the solitary 
author in his study. — They create an epoch in history. — Influence 
of popular authors. — The immortality of thought. — The family of 
genius illustrated by their genealogy 258 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES. 

Miscellanists 281 

Prefaces ' 286 

Style 291 

Goldsmith and Johnson 294 

Self-characters 295 

On reading •■» . 298 

On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302 

On novelty in literature 305 

Vers de Societe 308 

The genius of Moliere 310 

The sensibility of Bacine 325 

Of Sterne 332 

Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340 

Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors . . 350 

Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355 

Domesticity ; or a dissertation on servants 364 

Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375 



CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Advertisement 383 

Of the first modern assailants of the character of James I., Burnet, 
Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay, and Walpole . . . .386 

His pedantry 388 

His polemical studies 389 

how these were political 392 

The Hampton Court conference 393 



Contents. xv 

PAGE 

Of some of his writings 398 

Popular superstitions of the age 400 

The King's habits of life those of a man of letters ...... 402 

Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 404 

Of his eloquence 405 

Of his wit 406 

Specimens of his humour, and observations on human life .... 407 

Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth 410 

Of his " Basilicon Doron" 413 

Of his idea of a tyrant and a king 414 

Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants and associates . 415 

Describes the Revolutionists of his time 416 

Of the nobility of Scotland 417 

Of colonising ib. 

Of merchants 418 

Regulations for the prince's manners and habits ib. 

Of his idea of the royal prerogative 421 

The lawyers' idea of the same ib. 

Of his elevated conception of the kingly character 425 

His design in issuing " The Book of Sports" for the Sabbath-day . . 426 

The Sabbatarian controversy 428 

The motives of his aversion to war 430 

James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons ; their conduct . 431 

Of certain scandalous chronicles 434 

A picture of the age from a manuscript of the times 437 

Anecdotes of the manners of the age 441 

James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace of more 

than twenty years 449 

The King's private life in his occasional retirements 450 

A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the decriers of 

James 1 451 

Summary of his character 455 



THE 

LITERARY CHARACTER; 

OR, 

THE HISTORY OF MEN OF GENIUS, 

DRAWN FROM THEIR OWN FEELIN6S AND CONFESSIONS. 



? 



TO 

EOBERT SOUTHEY, LM)., 

&c. &c. &c. 



In dedicating this Work to one of the most eminent literary characters of 
the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which few, perhaps 
none, of my contemporaries can participate; for I am addressing him, 
whose earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century past ; and 
during that awful interval of time — for fifty years is a trial of life of what- 
ever may be good in us — you have multiplied your talents, and have never 
lost a virtue. 

When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude to 
our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least 
extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have 
operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called 
forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the 
present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which would 
include some of the important topics which concern the Public Mind, — 
but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page conse- 
crated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration from 
the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass away. 

I. DISRAELI. 
March, 1839. 



PREFACE. 



Foe the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my 
inquiries from early life, with feelings still delightful, and an 
enthusiasm not wholly diminished. 

Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed 
occurred to me in my youth, the materials which illustrate 
the literary character could never have been brought together. 
It was in early life that I conceived the idea of pursuing the 
history of genius by the similar events which had occurred to 
men of genius. Searching into literary history for the literary 
character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which 
every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former 
truth. By the great philosophical principle of induction, in- 
ferences were deduced and results established, which, however 
vague and doubtful in speculation, are irresistible when the 
appeal is made to facts as they relate to others, and to 
feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in our 
own breast. 

It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that 
I conceive that any single man of genius will resemble every 
man of genius ; for not only man differs from man, but varies 
from himself in the different stages of human life. All that 
I assert is, that every man of genius will discover, sooner or 
later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that 
he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and dis- 
orders, which arise from the same temperament and sym- 
pathies, and are the necessary consequence of occupying the 
same position, and passing through the same moral existence. 
Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the 

b2 



4 Preface. 

history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual 
commentary on our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret 
feelings which their prudence conceals,, or their fears obscure, 
or their modesty shrinks from, or their pride rejects ; but I 
have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they 
have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that 
many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the 
feelings which inspired these volumes ; nor, while I have 
elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the 
habits and characteristics of the lovers of literature. 

It has been considered that the subject of this work might 
have been treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition ; 
and there has since appeared an attempt to combine with this 
investigation the medical science. A work, however, should 
be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any 
preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the 
critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work is 
dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration 
or a description ; a conversation or a monologue ; an incident 
or a scene. 

Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the 
infirmities of men of genius. From others we may hourly 
learn to treat with levity the man of genius because he is 
only such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of the 
subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one — I 
may have exalted the literary character beyond the scale by 
which society is willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, 
so omnipotent, so all judicial ? The society of to-day was not 
the societ}' of yesterday. Its feelings, its thoughts, its 
manners, its rights, its wishes, and its wants, are different 
and are changed : alike changed or alike created by those very 
literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often 
would despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and 
peculiar class as useless members of our busy race. There 
are mental as well as material labourers. The first are not 



Preface. 5 

less necessary ; and as they are much rarer, so are tliey more 
precious. These are they whose "published labours " have 
benefited mankind — these are they whose thoughts can alone 
rear that beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object 
of all good men to elevate or to support. To discover truth 
and to maintain it, — to develope the powers, to regulate the 
passions, to ascertain the privileges of man, — such have ever 
been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of Authors ! 
Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our 
most necessary knowledge as well as our most refined plea- 
sures, are alike owing to this class of men ; and of these, some 
for glory, and often from benevolence, have shut themselves 
out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom they 
labour. 

Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a 
distant county, and printed at a provincial press, I published 
"An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Cha- 
racter." To my own habitual and inherent defects were 
superadded those of my youth. The crude production was, 
however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the 
subject was found more interesting than the writer. 

During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was 
often recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who 
have since obtained celebrity. They imagined that their at- 
tachment to literary pursuits had been strengthened even by 
so weak an effort. An extraordinary circumstance concurred 
with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into my hands 
which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of 
our times •; and the singular fact, that it had been more than 
once read by him, and twice in two subsequent years at 
Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly convinced me that the 
volume deserved my renewed attention. 

It was with these feelings that I was again strongly at- 
tracted to a subject from which, indeed, during the course of 
a studious life, it had never been long diverted. The conse- 



6 Preface. 

quence of my labours was the publication, in 1818, of an 
octavo volume, under the title of " The Literary Character, 
illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn from their 
own feelings and confessions." 

In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact 
respecting Lord Byron, which had been the immediate cause 
of its publication, I added these words : " I tell this fact 
assuredly not from any little vanity which it may appear to 
betray ; — for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid 
in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, 
I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance ; 
for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery ; 
— but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the 
circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight 
effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient 
authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to 
the anvil." 

Some time after the publication of this edition of " The 
Literary Character," which was in fact a new work, I was 
shown, through the kindness of an English gentleman lately 
returned from Italy, a copy of it, which had been given to 
him by Lord Byron, and which again contained marginal 
notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, 
and were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, 
which appeared in the work. 

In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly 
enlarged, and in two volumes. I took this opportunity of 
inserting the manuscript Notes of Lord Byron, with the ex- 
ception of one, which, however characteristic of the amiable 
feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my 
own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public* 

* As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord Byron's 
is interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be preserved. 
On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I have already 
quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write : 

" I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down 



Preface. 7 

Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received 
the following letter from his lordship : — 

" Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822. 

"Dear Sib, — If you will permit me to call you so, — I 
had some time ago taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for 
the present of your new edition of the ' Literary Character,' 
which has often been to me a consolation, and always a 
pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, 
and partly by vexation of different kinds, — for I have not 
very long ago lost a child by fever, and I have had a good 
deal of petty trouble with the laws of this lawless country, 
on account of the prosecution of a servant for an attack upon 
a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword 
upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the 
honour to mistake for an officer, and to treat like a gentle- 
man. He turned out to be neither, — like many other with 
medals, and in uniform ; but he paid for his brutality with a 
severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows 
whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have 
been able to identify neither ; which is strange, since he was 
wounded in the presence of thousands, in a public street, 
during a feast-day and full promenade. — But to return to 
things more analogous to the ' Literary Character,' I wish 
to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your 
hands, or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy oi 
publication would have attracted your attention, I would 
have made them more copious, and perhaps not so careless. 

" I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the 
genius you are pleased to call me, — but I am very willing to 
put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly 
enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even 

anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the 
author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in general 
I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author whatever, 
except such as treat of Turkey." 



8 Preface. 

when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be, till 
the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to our- 
selves, have sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no 
further. 

" Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine 
(not to be published till I am in my grave), which, strange as 
it may seem, I never read over since it was written, and have 
no desire to read over again. In it I have told what, as far 
as I know, is the truth — not the whole truth — for if I had 
done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissi- 
pated history : but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as 
regard for others permitted it to appear. 

"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS. ; but, 
as you are curious in such things as relate to the human 
mind, I should feel gratified if you had. I also sent him 
(Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by my 
friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may per- 
haps aid his publication in case of his surviving me. If 
there are any questions which you would like to ask me, as 
connected with your philosophy of the literary mind (if 
mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly, or give a 
reason for not, good — bad — or indifferent. At present, I am 
paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public 
taste ; for, as long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style 
of youth and the times in which we live, they applauded me 
to the very echo ; and within these few years, when I have 
endeavoured at better things, and written what I suspect to 
have the principle of duration in it : the Church, the Chan- 
cellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, 
Esq., of the Edinburgh Review, have risen up against me, 
and my later publications. Such is Truth ! men dare not 
look her in the face, except by degrees ; they mistake her for 
a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be Minerva. I do not 
mean to apply this mythological simile to my own endea- 
vours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your 



Preface. 9 

volumes to find innumerable and far more illustrious in- 
stances. It is lucky that I am of a temper not to \>Q easily 
turned aside, though by no means difficult to irritate. But I 
am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I 
write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the 
islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my 
old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet. As 
long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can 
partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or 
endure those of others. 

" 1 have the honour to be, truly, 

" Your obliged and faithful servant, 

"Noel Bteon. 
"To I. D' Israeli, Esq." 

The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter. 

This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of 
manhood, and associated with the noblest feelings of our 
nature, is an humble but fervent tribute, offered to the 
memory of those Master Spirits from whose labours, as 
Bttrke eloquently describes, " their country receives per- 
manent service : those who know how to make the silence of 
their closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise 
and bustle of courts, senates, and camps." 



THE 

LITERARY CHARACTER. 



CHAPTER I. 

Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art. 

Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has 
arisen, who, uninfluenced by the interests or the passions 
which give an impulse to the other classes of society, are 
connected by the secret links of congenial pursuits, and, in- 
sensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common 
labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the 
metropolitan cities of Europe the same authors are now read, 
and the same opinions become established : the Englishman 
is familiar with Machiavel and Montesquieu ; the Italian and 
the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke ; and the same smiles 
and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the 
Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Moliere, and 
Cervantes — 

Contemporains de tous les homines, 
Et citoyens de tous les lieux. 

A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Moliere, and dis- 
covered the Tartuffe in the Crimea ; and had this ingenious 
sovereign survived the translation which he ordered, the 
immortal labour of the comic satirist of France might have 
laid the foundation of good taste even among the Turks and 
the Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the 
opinion of an English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive 
authority on the peculiar characteristics of the historian 
Guicciarclini : the German Schlegel writes on our Shak- 
speare like a patriot ; and while the Italians admire the 
noble scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great 
poet, they have rejected the feeble attempts of their native 
artists. Such is the wide and the perpetual influence of this 
living intercourse of literary minds. 



12 Literary Character. 

Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of 
every nation was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius 
long could only hope for the spread of their fame in the single 
language of ancient Rome ; which for them had ceased to be 
natural, and could never be popular. It was in the inter- 
course of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the 
nations of Europe, that they learned each other's languages ; 
and they discovered that, however their manners varied as 
they arose from their different customs, they participated in 
the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same wants, 
and were alive to the same pleasures ; they perceived that 
there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, 
in abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit 
seems to bring them nearer to each other: and, as if literary 
Europe were intent to form but one people out of the popu- 
lace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal labours; they 
pledge to each other the same opinions ; and that knowledge 
which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at 
length mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all. 

But those who stand connected with this literary com- 
munity are not always sensible of the kindred alliance ; even 
a genius of the first order has not always been aware that he 
is the founder of a society, and that there will ever be a 
brotherhood where there is a father-genius. 

These literary characters are partially, and with a melan- 
choly colouring, exhibited by Johnson. " To talk in private, 
to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer inquiries, is the 
business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without 
pomp or terror ; and is neither known nor valued but by men 
like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those 
sad probationary years of genius when 

Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd ; 

not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to 
cast the minds of his contemporaries and of the succeeding 
age in the mighty mould of his own ; Johnson was of that 
order of men whose individual genius becomes that of a 
people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of 
Milton, of " that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise 
which God and good men have consented shall be the reward 
of those whose published labours advanced the good of 
mankind." 

The literary character is a denomination which, how_ 



Similarity of Literary Men. 13 

ever vague, defines the pursuits of the individual, and sepa- 
rates him from other professions, although it frequently 
occurs that he is himself a member of one. Professional 
characters are modified by the change of manners, and are 
usually national ; while the literary character, from the 
objects in which it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, 
and necessarily a more independent nature. 

Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same 
motives, notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, 
and the remoteness of times and places, the literary character 
has ever preserved among its followers the most striking 
family resemblance. The passion for study, the delight in 
books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions 
of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity 
of their habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of 
literary glory, were as truly described by Cicero and the 
younger Pliny as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as they 
have been by Hume and Gibbon. And this similarity, too, 
may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion 
of the lovers of literature and of art for collecting together 
their mingled treasures ; a thirst which was as insatiable in 
Atticus and Peiresc as in our Cracherode and Town- 
let.* We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries 
in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with 
nations far advanced in civilization ; for among these may be 
equally observed both the great artificers of knowledge and 
those who preserve unbroken the vast chain of human acqui- 
sitions.- The one have stamped the images of their minds on 
their works, and the others have preserved the circulation of 
this intellectual coinage, this 

Gold of the dead, 

Which Time does still disperse, but not devour. 

* The Rev. C. M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to the 
British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he bad 
employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered nearly 
4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, many by 
early Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print- 
room of the same establishment ; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way 
added to the other departments. The " Townley Gallery" of classic 
sculpture was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200Z. It 
had been collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount 
of good fortune also ; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on 
the site of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli ; and he had for aids and advisers 
Sir William Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors ; and was 
the friend and correspondent of D'Hancarville and Winckelmann. — Ed. 



14 Literary Character. 



CHAPTEE II. 

Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves. — Matter-of-fact 
Men, and Men of Wit. — The Political Economist. — Of those who abandon 
their studies. — Men in office. — The arbiters of public opinion. — Those 
who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 

The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously 
lowered by those literary men who, from motives not always 
difficult to penetrate, are eager to confound the ranks in 
the republic of letters, maliciously conferring the honours of 
authorship on that " Ten Thousand" whose recent list is not 
so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.* 

Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit 
and taste, were long inimical to each other's pursuits. f The 
Royal Society in its origin could hardly support itself against 
the ludicrous attacks of literary men,J and the Antiquarian 

* We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our 
own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, 
before the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When 
David would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "Why doth my lord 
delight in this?" In political economy, the population returns may be 
useful, provided they be correct ; but in the literary republic, its numerical 
force diminishes the strength of the empire. " There you are numhered, 
we had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of litera- 
ture, of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries ; such as the writers 
of the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation, 
&c. ; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular ; count for 
nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists ; and strike out our literary 
charlatans; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not consist, as 
it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters. 

+ The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual Esteem." 
% See Butler, in his "Elephant in the Moon." South, in his oration 
at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter sarcasm on the 
naturalists, — "Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos — et se ipsos;" — 
nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves ! The illustrious 
Sloanb endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of Dr. King. 
One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls les Sciences des 
faux Scavans is Father Malebranche ; he is far more severe than Corne- 
lius Agrippa, and he long preceded Rousseau, so famous for his invective 
against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth book is an inimita- 
ble satire. " The principal excuse," says he, " which engages men in false 
studies, is, that they have attached the idea of learned where they should 
not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient poetry, and natural 
history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical scythe. When we become 
acquainted with the idea Father Malebranche attaches to the term learned^ 
we understand him — and we smile. 



Adversaries of Literature. 15 

Society has afforded them amusement.* Such partial views 
have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a 
new substance to literature ; literature combines new asso- 
ciations for the votaries of knowledge. There is no subject 
in nature, and in the history of man, which will not associate 
with our feelings and our curiosity, whenever genius extends 
its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist, the 
architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, 
have in our days asserted their claims, and discovered their 
long-interrupted relationship with the great family of genius 
and literature. 

A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysicians of 
political economy, have struck at the essential existence of 
the productions of genius in literature and art ; for, appre- 
ciating them by their own standard, they have miserably de- 
graded the professors. Absorbed in the contemplation of 
material objects, and rejecting whatever does not enter into 
their own restricted notion of " utility," these cold arithme- 
tical seers, with nothing but millions in their imagination, 
and whose choicest works of art are spinning-jennies, have 
valued the intellectual tasks of the library and the studio by 
" the demand and the supply." They have sunk these pur- 
suits into the class of what they term " unproductive labour ;" 
and by another result of their line and level system, men of 
letters, with some other important characters, are forced down 
into the class " of buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In 
a system of political economy it has been discovered that 
" that unprosperous race of men, called men of letters, must 
necessarily occupy their present forlorn state in society much 
as formerly, when a scholar and a beggar seem to have been 
terms very nearly synonymous. "f In their commercial, 
agricultural, and manufacturing view of human nature, 
addressing society by its most pressing wants and its coarsest 
feelings, these theorists limit the moral and physical existence 
of man by speculative tables of population, planing and level- 
ling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They 
would yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and 
vulgar destination. Man is considered only as he wheels on 
the wharf, or as he spins in the factory ; but man, as a recluse 
being of meditation, or impelled to action by more generous 

* See the chapter on "Puck the Commentator," in the "Curiosities of 
Literature," vol. iii. ; also p. 804 of the same volume, 
t "Wealth of Nations," i. 182. 



16 Literary Character. 

passions, has been struck out of the system of our political 
economists. It is, however, only among their " unproduc- 
tive labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose 
habitual pursuits are consumed in the development of thought 
and the gradual accessions of knowledge ; those men of whom 
the sage of Judea declares, that " It is he who hath little 
business who shall become wise : how can he get wisdom that 
holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks ? But 
they," — the men of leisure and study, — " will maintain 
the sta.te oe the "woeld !" The prosperity and the happi- 
ness of a people include something more evident and more 
permanent than " the Wealth of a Nation."* 

There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are 
heartless to the interests of literature. Like Cornelius 
Agbippa, who wrote on " the vanity of the arts and sciences," 
many of these are only tracing in the arts which they have 
abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble tastes, 
and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this 
class, study has usually served as the instrument, not as the 
object, of their ascent ; it was the ladder which they once 
climbed, but it was not the eastern star which guided and in- 
spired. Such literary characters were WAE,BUE,TON,t Wat- 

* Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading views of 
some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that Mr. Mal- 
thus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr. Malthus 
has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding to the 
productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to estimate the value 
of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakspeare 
and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a 
poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted 
their country." — Principles of Pol. Econ. p. 48. And hence he acknow- 
ledges, that ' ' some unproductive labour is of much more use and impor- 
tance than productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the 
gross calculations which relate to national wealth ; contributing to other 
sources of happiness besides those which are derived from matter." Po- 
litical economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous 
Porson, who once observed, that "it seemed to him very hard, that with 
all his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds." 
They would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just 
as it ought to be ; the same occurrence had even happened to Homer in his 
own country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in 
England ; but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had 
the Grecian bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same 
stocking -frame together, instead of the "Iliad." 

f For a full disquisition of the character and career of Warburton, see 
the essay in " Quarrels of Authors." 



Wilkes. 17 

son, and Wilkes, who abandoned their studies when their 
studies had served a purpose. 

Watson gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant he 
obtained their limited reward, and the laboratory closed when 
the professorship was instituted. Such was the penurious 
love he bore for the science which he had adopted, that the 
extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent to his 
own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He 
tells us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the 
wretched jingle expressed the mere worldliness that dictated 
it. In the same spirit of calculation with which he had at 
first embraced science and literature, he abandoned them ; 
and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of that 
egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the 
creature of selfism and political ambition. 

We are accustomed to consider Wilkes merely as a poli- 
tical adventurer, and it may surprise to find this " city cham- 
berlain" ranked among professed literary characters: yet in 
his variable life there was a period when he cherished the 
aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce 
the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a 
commentary ; and his correspondence on this subject, which 
has never appeared, would, as he himself tells us, afford a 
variety of hints and communications. Wilkes was then 
warmed by literary glory ; for on his retirement into Italy, 
he declared, " I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's 
work, and to my History of England. I wish to equal the 
dignity of Livy : I am sure the greatness and majesty of our 
nation demand an historian equal to him." They who have 
only heard of the intriguing demagogue, and witnessed the 
last days of the used voluptuary, may hardly imagine that 
Wilkes had ever cherished such elevated projects ; but mob- 
politics made this adventurer's fortune, which fell to the lot 
of an epicurean : and the literary glory he once sought he 
lived to ridicule, in the immortal diligence of Lord Chatham 
and of Gibbon. Dissolving life away, and consuming all his 
feelings on himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he 
left the world — the memory of an anti-social being ! This 
wit, who has bequeathed to us no wit ; this man of genius, 
who has formed no work of genius ; this bold advocate for 
popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the chamberlain- 
ship ; was indeed desirous of leaving behind him some trace 
of the life of an escroc in a piece of autobiography, 

c 



18 Literary Character. 

which, for the benefit of the world, has been thrown to the 
flames. 

Men who have ascended into office through its gradations, 
or have been thrown upwards by accident, are apt to view 
others in a cloud of passions and politics. They who once 
commanded us by their eloquence, come at length to suspect 
the eloquent ; and in their " pride of office" would now drive 
us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption 
of political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been 
reproached even by his friends for the contemptuous indif- 
ference with which he treated literary men. Perhaps Burke 
himself, long a literary character, might incur some portion 
of this censure, by involving the character itself in the odium 
of a monstrous political sect. These political characters re- 
semble Adrian VI., who, obtaining the tiara as the reward of 
his studies, afterwards persecuted literary men, and, say the 
Italians, dreaded lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate 
itself* 

Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast become 
the arbiters of public opinion ; for the greatest of writers may 
unquestionably be forced into ridiculous attitudes by the well- 
known artifices practised by modern criticism. The elephant, 
no longer in his forest struggling with his hunters, but falling 
entrapped by a paltry snare, comes at length, in the height 
of ill-fortune, to dance on heated iron at the bidding of the 
pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to 
mortify the vanity of authors, at least it requires as much 
vanity to give effect to their own polished effrontery. f Scorn, 

* It lias been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated, for that 
this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he meditated. But 
Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away with contempt 
from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary genius. He was 
one of the cui bono race, a branch of our political economists. When they 
showed him the Laocoon, Adrian silenced their raptures by the frigid ob- 
servation, that all such things were idola antiquorum ; and ridiculed the 
amena letteratura till every man of genius retreated from his court. Had 
Adrian's reign extended beyond its brief period, men of taste in their panic 
imagined that in his zeal the Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues 
of ancient art, to expedite the edifice of St. Peter. 

+ Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious sinner ; the 
Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of modern criti- 
cism. In the character of Burns, the Edinburgh Keviewer, with his 
peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of genius ; 
but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the in- 
spiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great artists 
who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own works, 



Debased Views of Literature. 19 

sarcasm, and invective, the egotism of the vain, and the 
irascibility of the petulant, where they succeed in debilitating 
genius of the consciousness of its powers, are practising the 
witchery of that ancient superstition of " tying the knot," 
which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by 
its ideal forcefulness.* 

That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of 
society, by detracting from or burlesquing the elevating 
principles which have produced so many illustrious men, has 
recently attempted to reduce the labours of literature to a 
mere curious amusement : a finished composition is likened 
to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely exe- 
cuted ; and curious researches, to charades and other insigni- 
ficant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not 
be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. 
The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of 
writing; but this art is only its last perfection. Inspiration 
is drawn from a deeper source ; enthusiasm is diffused through 
contagious pages ; and without these movements of the soul, 
how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition 
which flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice ! 
We have been recently told, on critical authority, that " a 
great genius should never allow himself to be sensible to his 
own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits of much consequence, 
however important or successful." A sort of catholic doc- 

generously avowed that, " a certain tone of exaggeration is incidental we 
fear to the sort of writing in which we are engaged. Reckoning a little 
too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often led to overstate our 
sentiments : when a little controversial warmth is added to a little love of 
effect, an excess of colouring steals over the canvas, which ultimately 
offends no eye so much as our own." But what if this love of effect in the 
critic has been too often obtained at the entire cost of the literary cha- 
racters, the fruits of whose studious days at this moment lie withering in 
oblivion, or whose genius the critic has deterred from pursuing the career 
it had opened for itself ! To have silenced the learned, and to have terri- 
fied the modest, is the barbarous triumph of a Hun or a Vandal ; and the 
vaunted freedom of the literary republic departed from us when the 
vacillating public blindly consecrated the edicts of the demagogues of lite- 
rature, whoever they may be. 

A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one fac- 
tion drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal. 
Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while 
we are degraded. 

* Nouer V ' aiguillette, of which the extraordinary effect is described by 
Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised. — Mr. Hobhouse' s Journey 
through Albania, p. 528. 

c2 



20 Literary Character. 

trine, to mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the 
glorious appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self- 
flagellation everyday! Bueeon and G-ibbow, Voltaire and 
Pope,* who gave to literature all the cares, the industry, 
and the glory of their lives, assuredly were too " sensible to 
their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of much conse- 
quence," particularly when "important and successful." The 
self-possession of great authors sustains their own genius by 
a sense of their own glory. 

Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the lite- 
rary character against literature — " Et tu, Brute !" But the 
hero of literature outlives his assassins, and might address 
them in that language of poetry and affection with which a 
Mexican king reproached his traitorous counsellors : — " You 
were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my eyes." 



CHAPTER III. 

Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius. — Their habits and pur- 
suits analogous. — The nature of their genius is similar in their distinct 
works. — Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued by 
both. 

Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, 
pass through the same permanent discipline ; and thus it has 
happened that the same habits and feelings, and the same 
fortunes, have accompanied men who have sometimes un- 
happily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous. 

Let the artist share 
The palm ; he shares the peril, and dejected 
Faints o'er the labour unapproved — alas ! 
Despair and genius ! — 

The congenial histories of literature and art describe the 
same periodical revolutions and parallel eras. After the 
golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the silver, 
and at length precipitately descend into the iron. In the 
history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael, 
Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Carraccis, 
Domenichino, Gruido, and Albano ; as we read Paterculus, 

* The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied in the 
days of Byron ; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by that 
poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron, whom 
some transcendentalists have attacked. — Ed. 



Art and Literature. 21 

Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and Silius Italicus, after their 
immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and Horace. 

It is evident that Milton, Michael Angelo, and 
Handel, belong to the same order of minds ; the same ima- 
ginative powers, and the same sensibility, are only operating 
with different materials. Lanzi, the delightful historian of 
the Storia Pittorica, is prodigal of his comparisons of the 
painters with the poets ; his delicacy of perception discerned 
the refined analogies which for ever unite the two sisters, 
and he fondly dwelt on the transplanted flowers of the two 
arts : " Chi sente che sia Tibullo net poetare sente chi sia 
Andrea (del Sario) nel dipingere" he who feels what 
Tibullus is in poetry, feels what Andrea is in painting. 
Michael Angelo, from his profound conception of the 
terrible and the difficult in art, was called its Dante ; from 
the Italian poet the Italian sculptor derived the grandeur of 
his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had deeply 
nourished the artist's imagination ; for once he had poured 
about the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, 
in the rapid designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us 
of a very curious volume in manuscript, composed by Rubens, 
which contained, among other topics concerning art, descrip- 
tions of the passions and actions of men, drawn from the 
poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here 
were battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, 
which were transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by 
their side Rubens had copied what he had met with on those 
subjects from Raphael and the antique.* 

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the 
mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory 
has only produced an idle contest. This old family-quarrel 
for precedence was renewed by our estimable President, in 
his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains that 
" the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action 
itself before the eyes ;" while the enthusiast Barry considers 
painting " as poetry realised. "f This error of genius, perhaps 

* Rubens -was an ardent collector of works of antique art ; and in the 
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be found an interesting 
account of his museum at Antwerp. — Ed. 

f The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished artist, 
who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks, ' ' What 
is there of intellectual in the operations of the poet which the painter 
does not equal ? "What is there of mechanical which he does not surpass ? 
The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued narration 



22 Literary Character. 

first caught from "Richardson's bewildering pages, was 
strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted by Dae- 
wln", who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry, 
asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The 
philosophical critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each 
sister-art her distinct province ; and it is only a pleasing 
delirium, in the enthusiasm of artists, which has confused 
the boundaries of these arts. The dread pathetic story of 
Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael Angelo, 
formed the subject of a basso-relievo ; and Reynolds, with 
his highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the 
poet as much as his art permitted : but assuredly both 
these great artists would never have claimed the precedence 
of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at the 
rivalry. 

Who has not heard of that one common principle which 
unites the intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the 
nature of their genius is similar in their distinct works ? 
Hence curious inquiries could never decide whether the 
group of the Laocoon in sculpture preceded or was borrowed 
from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor 
copied the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocoon 
was the common end where the sculptor and the poet were 
to meet ; and we may observe that the artists in marble 
and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their re- 
spective art : the one having to prefer the nude, rejected 
the veiling fillet from the forehead, that he might not con- 
ceal its deep expression, and the drapery of the sacrificial 
robe, that he might display the human form in visible agony ; 
but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest the priest 
with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us 
the interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they 
obtained by different means, adapted to their respective arts, 
that common end which each designed ; but who will decide 
which invention preceded the other, or who was the greater 
artist ? 

This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits 
is so natural, that when G-eskek, in his inspiring letter on 

and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar merit of the 
poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is common to 
prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting as the latest and 
most refined. — Ed. 



Barry's Enthusiasm. 23 

landscape-painting,* recommends to the young painter a 
constant study of poetry and literature, the impatient artist 
is made to exclaim, " Must we combine with so many other 
studies those which belong to literary men ? Must we read 
as well as paint ?" " It is useless to reply to this question ; 
for some important truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps 
the fundamental ones in the arts." A truly imaginative artist, 
whose enthusiasm was never absent when he meditated on the 
art he loved, Bakby, thus vehemently broke forth : " Gro home 
from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise your- 
selves in the creative part of your art, with Homer, with 
Livy, and all the great characters, ancient and modern, for 
your companions and counsellors." This genial intercourse 
of literature with art may be proved by painters who have 
suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected 
them for painters. Goldsmith suggested the subject of the 
tragic and pathetic picture of Ugolino to the pencil of 

EETIS'OLDS. 

All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sor- 
rows and enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and 
characteristics. In the history of men of genius we may 
often open the secret story of their minds, for they have 
above others the privilege of communicating their own 
feelings ; and every life of a man of genius, composed by 
himself, presents us with the experimental philosophy of the 
mind. By living with their brothers, and contemplating 
their masters, they will judge from consciousness less erro- 
neously than from discussion ; and in forming comparative 
views and parallel situations, they will discover certain habits 
and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves. 

Sydenham has beautifully said, " Whoever describes a 
violet exactly as to its colour, taste, smell, form, and other 
properties, will find the description agree in most particulars 
with all the violets in the universe." 

* Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gresner, who 
was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his poems 
by designs as graceful as their subject. — Ed. 



24 Literary Character. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal 
aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and education. — Originates in 
peculiar qualities of the mind. — The predisposition of genius. — A substi- 
tution for the white paper of Locke. * 

That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belong- 
ing to him and to no other, and which in a work forms that 
creative part whose likeness is not found in any other work 
— is it inherent in the constitutional dispositions of the 
Creator, or can it be formed hj patient acquisition ? 

Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some 
have imagined that they have formed their genius solely by 
their own studies ; when they generated, they conceived that 
they had acquired ; and, losing the distinction between nature 
and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of philosophy 
substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the 
most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! 
Men of genius, whose great occupation is to be conversant 
with the inspirations of Nature, made up a factitious one 
among themselves, and assumed that they could operate with- 
out the intervention of the occult original. But Nature 
would not be mocked ; and whenever this race of idolaters 
have worked without her agency, she has afflicted them with 
the most stubborn sterility. 

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our 
own philosophical times ; ages of genius had passed away, 
and they left no other record than their works ; no precon- 
certed theory described the workings of the imagination to 
be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to 
invent invention. 

The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and 
education, on the principle of the equality of the human 
mind, infers that men have an equal aptitude for the work of 

* In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some points 
of this inquiry in the second chapter : I almost despaired to find any phi- 
losopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they imagine, are 
the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably surprised to find 
these ideas taken up in the Edinburgh Review for August, 1820, in an 
entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt, profited by the 
perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met with that spirited 
vindication of "an inherent difference in the organs or faculties to receive 
impressions of any kind." 



Natural Genius. 25 

genius : a paradox which, with a more fatal one, came from the 
French school, and arose probably from an equivocal expression. 

Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind 
with "white paper void of all characters," to free his famous 
" Inquiry " from that powerful obstacle to his system, the 
absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of objects before 
objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher con- 
sidered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the 
manner in which he conceived the impressions of the senses 
write themselves on the mind. His French pupils, the 
amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they were equally con- 
cerned in the paradoxical " L'Esprit," inferred that this blank 
paper served also as an evidence that men had an equal apti- 
tude for genius, just as the blank paper reflects to us what- 
ever characters we trace on it. This equality of minds gave 
rise to the same monstrous doctrine in the science of meta- 
physics which that of another verbal misconception, the 
equality of men, did in that of politics. The Scottish meta- 
physicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of 
the mind, — an important and a curious truth ; for as rules 
and principles exist in the nature of things, and when dis- 
covered are only thence drawn out, genius unconsciously con- 
ducts itself by a uniform process ; and when this process had 
been traced, they inferred that what was done by some men, 
under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the 
march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, 
in the same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. 
But these metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose 
knife all men are alike. They know the structure of the bones, 
the movement of the muscles, and where the connecting lig-a- 
ments lie ! but the invisible principle of life flies from their 
touch. It is the practitioner on the living body who studies 
in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which 
forms the idiosyncrasy. 

Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, 
Johnson defined it as "A Mind of large general powers 
accidentally determined by some 'particular direction ." 
On this principle we must infer that the reasoning Locke, or 
the arithmetical De Moivre, could have been the musical 
and fairy Spenser.* This conception of the nature of 

* It is more dangerous to define than to describe : a dry definition ex- 
cludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our sympathies. 
How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he nobly 



26 . Literary Character, 

genius became prevalent. It induced the philosophical Bec- 
cakia to assert that every individual had an equal degree of 
genius for poetry and eloquence ; it runs through the philo- 
sophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart ; and Reynolds, the 
pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox, con- 
structed his automatic system on this principle of equal apti- 
tude. He says, " this excellence, however expressed by 
genius, taste, or the gift of Heaven, I am confident may be 
acquired." Reynolds had the modesty to fancy that so many 
rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the magic 
of his own pencil : but his theory of industry, so essential to 
genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the 
drudges of art, and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael ! 
Another man of genius caught the fever of the new system. 
Currie, in his eloquent " Life of Burns," swells out the 
scene of genius to a startling magnificence ; for he asserts 
that, " the talents necessary to the construction of an 
' Iliad,' under different discipline and application, might have 
led armies to victory or kingdoms to prosperity ; might have 
wielded the thunder of eloquence, or discovered and enlarged 
the sciences." All this we find in the text ; but in the clear 
intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening 
difficulties started up, and in a copious note the numerous 
exceptions show that the assumed theory requires no other 
refutation than what the theorist has himself so abundantly 
and so judiciously supplied. There is something ludicrous in 
the result of a theory of genius which would place Hobbes 
and Ekasmus, those timid and learned recluses, to open a 
campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity 
of a Marlborough ; or conclude that the romantic bard of 
the " Fairy Queen," amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his 
visionary reveries, could have deduced, by slow and patient 
watchings of the mind, the system and the demonstrations of 
Newton. 

Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a 
variety of exterior or secondary causes : zealously rejecting 
the notion that genius may originate in constitutional dispo- 
sitions, and be only a mode of the individual's existence, they 

describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines, ampli- 
fies, and animates ; the energy without which judgment is cold, and 
knowledge is inert !" And it is this power op mind, this primary faculty 
and native aptitude, which we deem may exist separately from education 
and habit, since these are often found unaccompanied by genius. 



Theories of Genius. 27 

deny that minds are differently constituted. Habit and edu- 
cation, being more palpable and visible in their operations, 
and progressive in the development of the intellectual facul- 
ties, have been imagined fully sufficient to make the creative 
faculty a subject of acquirement. 

But when these theorists had discovered the curious fact, 
that we have owed to accident several men of genius, and 
when they laid open some sources which influenced genius 
in its progress, they did not go one step farther, they 
did not inquire whether such sources and such accidents had 
ever supplied the want of genius in the individual. Effects 
were here again mistaken for causes. Could Spenser have 
kindled a poet in Cowley, Richardson a painter in Reynolds, 
and Descartes a metaphysician in Malebranche, if those 
master-minds, pointed out as having been such from accident, 
had not first received the indelible mint-stamp struck by the 
hand of Nature, and which, to give it a name, we may be 
allowed to call the 'predisposition of genius ? The accidents 
so triumphantly held forth, which are imagined to have 
created the genius of these men, have occurred to a thousand 
who have run the same career ; but how does it happen that 
the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius 
arrives alone at the goal ? 

This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in time 
found to stand in contradiction with itself, and perpetually 
with their own experience. Reynolds pared down his deci- 
sion in the progress of his lectures, often wavered, often 
altered, and grew more confused as he lived longer to look 
about him.* The infirm votaries of the new philosophy, with 
all their sources of genius open before them, went on multi- 
plying mediocrity, while inherent genius, true to nature, still 
continued rare in its solitary independence. 

Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any 
peculiar species of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem 

* I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgewortli. ''As to original 
genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing talent, the 
last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the introduction to the 
second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was strengthened in his 
belief, that many of the great differences of intellect which appear in men, 
depend more upon the early cultivating the habit of attention than upon 
any disparity between the powers of one individual and another. Per- 
haps, he latterly allowed that there is more difference than he had formerly 
admitted between the natural powers of different persons ; but not so 
great as is generally supposed." — EdgewortKs Memoirs, ii. 388. 



28 Literary Character. 

into capacity, of which men only differ in the degree. They 
can perceive no distinction between the poetical and the 
mathematical genius ; and they conclude that a man of 
genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever 
he chooses, but is determined by his first acquired habit to 
be what he is. # 

In substituting the term capacity for that of genius, the 
origin or nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, 
or how is it inherent ? To assert that any man of genius 
may become what he wills, those most fervently protest 
against who feel that the character of genius is such that it 
cannot be other than it is ; that there is an identity of minds, 
and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as 
perfect as the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysi- 
cian has recently declared that " Locke or Newton might have 
been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton, had they given 
themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well to know 
how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philoso- 
phers obstinately, against nature, persisted in the attempt, as 
some have unluckily for themselves, we should have lost 
two great philosophers, and have obtained two supernumerary 
poets, f 

It would be more useful to discover another source of genius 
for philosophers and poets, less fallible than the gratuitous 
assumptions of these theorists. An adequate origin for pecu- 
liar qualities in the mind may be found in that constitutional 
or secret propensity which adapts some for particular pur- 
suits, and forms the predisposition of genius. 

* Johnson once asserted, that " the supposition of one man having more 
imagination, another more judgment,- is not true ; it is only one man has 
mors mind than another. He who has vigour may walk to the east as 
well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Godwin was 
persuaded that all genius is a mere acquisition, for he hints at " infusing 
it," and making it a thing "heritable." A reversion which has been 
missed by the many respectable dunces who have been sons of men of 
genius. 

+ This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down this pos- 
tulate, acknowledges that ' ' Dr. Beattie had talents for a poet, but appa- 
rently not for a philosopher." It is amusing to learn another result of his 
ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes in these 
words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that a great 
poet is but an ordinary genius," Let this sturdy Scotch metaphysician 
never approach Pegasus — he has to fear, not his wings, but his heels. If 
some have written on genius with a great deal too much, others have 
written without any. 



Predisposition and Habit. 29 

Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversa- 
ries have failed in proving ; we may still remain ignorant of 
the nature of genius, and yet be convinced that they have not 
revealed it. The phenomena of predisposition in the mind 
are not more obscure and ambiguous than those which have 
been assigned as the sources of genius in certain individuals. 
For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in his 
constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is 
developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which 
breaks forth in the temperament and moulds the habits, than 
to conjecture that these men of genius could not have been such 
but from accident, or that they differ only in their capacity ? 
Every class of men of genius has distinct habits ; all poets 
resemble one another, as all painters and all mathematicians. 
There is a conformity in the cast of their minds, and the 
quality of each is distinct from the other, and the very faculty 
which fits them for one particular pursuit, is just the reverse 
required for another. If these are truisms, as they may 
appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only 
wish to draw our conclusion. Why does this remarkable 
similarity prevail through the classes of genius ? Because 
each, in their favourite production, is working with the same 
appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with 
imagery ; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind 
be busied with the passions ; as early will the painter's 
hand be copying forms and colours ; as early will the 
young musician's ear wander in the creation of sounds, 
and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It 
is then the aptitude of the appropriate organ, however 
it varies in its character, in which genius seems most 
concerned, and which is connatural and connate with the 
individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is horn with 
him. There seems no other source of genius ; for whenever 
this has been refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of 
genius, neither habit nor education, have ever supplied its 
want. To discriminate between the habit and the predisposi- 
tion is quite impossible ; because whenever great genius dis- 
covers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has become a 
habit with the individual ; it is the fatal notion of habit 
having the power of generating genius, which has so long 
served to delude the numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natu- 
ral or native power is enlarged by art ; but the most perfect 
art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural disposition. 



30 Literary Character. 

A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn 
from an admirable judge of the nature of genius. Akenside, 
in that fine poem which forms its history, tracing its source, 
sang, 

From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends 

The flame of genius to the human breast. 

But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many 
years after, the bard has vindicated the solitary and inde- 
pendent origin of genius, by the mysterious epithet, 

THE CHOSEN BREAST. 

The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of 
his own poetical life, and those of some of his brothers. 

Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical 
inquiries : usually they include too little or take in too much. 
Yet fanciful analogies are not willingly abandoned. The 
iconologists describe Genius as a winged child with a flame 
above its head ; the wings and the flame express more than 
some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute for " the 
white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher in his 
description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less 
artificial substance. In the soils of the earth we may dis- 
cover that variety of primary qualities which we believe to 
exist in human minds. The botanist and the geologist always 
find the nature of the strata indicative of its productions ; 
the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil 
it covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the 
richness of the matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is 
scarcely reasoning by analogy to apply this operating princi- 
ple of nature to the faculties of men. 

But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we 
understand by the term Genius remain still wrapt up in its 
mysterious bud, may we not trace its history in its votaries ? 
If Nature overshadow with her wings her first causes, still 
the effects lie open before us, and experience and observation 
will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from 
demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, 
has kept back her last secrets ; if Newton, even in the result 
of his reasonings, has religiously abstained from penetrating 
into her occult connexions, is it nothing to be her historian, 
although we cannot be her legislator ? 



Youthful Studies. 31 



CHAPTER V. 

Youth of genius, — Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent 
actions. — Parents bave another association of the man of genius than we. 
— Of genius, its first habits. — Its melancholy. — Its reveries. — Its love of 
solitude. — Its disposition to repose. — Of a youth distinguished by his 
equals. — Feebleness of its first attempts. — Of genius not discoverable even 
in manhood. —The education of the youth may not be that of his genius. — 
An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation. — With 
some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention. — What the youth first 
applies to is commonly his delight afterwards. — Facts of the decisive 
character of genius. 

We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and 
chasing the most changeable lights ; many stories we shall 
hear, and many scenes will open on us ; yet though realities are 
but dimly to be traced in this twilight of imagination and tra- 
dition, we think that the first impulses of genius may be often 
illustrated by the subsequent actions of the individual ; and 
whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be difficult 
to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion 
between those first impulses and these last actions. 

Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an un- 
steady outline of the man ? In the temperament of genius 
may we not reasonably look for certain indications or predis- 
positions, announcing the permanent character ? Is not great 
sensibility born with its irritable fibres ? Will not the deep 
retired character cling to its musings ? And the unalterable 
being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commandino- 
even amidst his sports, lead on his equals ? The boyhood of 
Cato was marked by the sternness of the man, observable in 
his speech, his countenance, and his puerile amusements ; and 
Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gray, and others, betrayed the 
same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and pre- 
cocity of character. 

The virtuous and contemplative Boyle imagined that he 
had discovered in childhood that disposition of mind which 
indicated an instinctive ingenuousness. An incident which he 
relates, evinced, as he thought, that even then he preferred to 
aggravate his fault rather than consent to suppress any part 
of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his mind. 
His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquirj'-. 
" This trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have 
mentioned now, not that I think that in itself it deserves a 



32 Literary Character. 

relation, but because as the sun is seen best at his rising and 
his setting, so men's native dispositions are clearliest per- 
ceived whilst they are children, and when they are dying. 
These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of 
men's true humours." 

Aleieri, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious 
that even in his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy 
of his character prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic 
solitude fed the interior feelings of his impassioned character; 
and in noticing some incidents of a childish nature, this man 
of genius observes, " Whoever will reflect on these inept cir- 
cumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, 
possibly may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as 
they may appear." His native genius, or by whatever other 
term we may describe it, betrayed the wayward predisposi- 
tions of some of his poetical brothers : " Taciturn and placid 
for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious, 
and usually in the most opposite extremes ; stubborn and im- 
patient against force, but most open to kindness, more 
restrained by the dread of reprimand than by anything else, 
susceptible of shame to excess, but inflexible if violently 
opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven years old, 
a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this 
result from his own self-experience, that " man is a continua- 
tion of the child:'* 

That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its 
future character, was long the feeling of antiquity. Cicero, 
in his " Dialogue on Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy 
drawn from Nature, marking her secret conformity in all things 
which have life and come from her hands ; and the human 
mind is one of her plants. " Youth is the vernal season of 
life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of 
those future fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding 
periods." One of the masters of the human mind, after much 
previous observation of those who attended his lectures, would 
advise one to engage in political studies, then exhorted another 
to compose history, elected these to be poets, and those to be 
orators; for Isocrates believed that Nature had some con- 
cern in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at 
her secret by detecting the first energetic inclination of the 

* See in his Life, chap, iv., entitled Sviluppo delV indole indicate da 
vari fattarelli. "Development of genius, or natural inclination, indicated 
by various little matters." 



Youthful Studies. 33 

mind. This also was the principle which guided the Jesuits, 
those other great masters in the art of education. They 
studied the characteristics of their pupils with such singular 
care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive of 
their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In 
some cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They 
described Fontenelle, adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et 
inter discipulos princeps, " a youth accomplished in every 
respect, and the model for his companions ;" but when they 
describe the elder Crebillon, piier ingeniosus sed insignis 
Tiebulo, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not 
have erred so much as they appear to have done ; for an 
impetuous boyhood showed the decision of a character which 
might not have merely and misanthropically settled in 
imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of 
unparalleled atrocity. 

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes 
to the king to request he would make his son a knight — " It 
is a great thing thou askest," said Arthur, who inquired 
whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his son. The 
old man's answer is remarkable — " Of my son, not of me ; for 
I have thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour 
I put them ; but this child will not labour for me, for any- 
thing that I and my wife will do ; but always he will be 
shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles, and to 
behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me 
to be made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to 
fetch all his sons ; " they were all shapen much like the poor 
man ; but Tor was not like none of them in shape and in 
countenance, for he was much more than any of them. And 
so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of 
genius — the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the 
unhappy genius in the family, who perplexed and plagued the 
cowherd and his wife and his twelve brothers, was the youth 
averse to the common labour, and dreaming of chivalry amidst 
a herd of cows. 

A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and 
has first to encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, un- 
assisted by that feeble ductility which adapts itself to the 
common destination. Parents are too often the victims of 
the decided propensity of a son to a Yirgil or a Euclid ; and 
the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience and 
grief. Lilly, our famous astrologer, has described the fre- 

D 



34 Literary Character. 

quent situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who 
would be a knight. Lilly proposed to his father that he 
should try his fortune in the metropolis, where he expected 
that his learning and his talents would prove serviceable to 
him ; the father, quite incapable of discovering the latent 
genius of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly 
consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, " I could 
not work, drive the plough, or endure any country labour ; 
my father oft would say I was good for nothing" — words 
which the fathers of so many men of genius have repeated,* 

In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often repro- 
bate the domestic persecutions of those who opposed his in- 
clinations. No poet but is moved with indignation at the 
recollection of the tutor at the Port Royal thrice burning the 
romance which Racine at length got by heart ; no geometri- 
cian but bitterly inveighs against the father of Pascal for 
not suffering him to study Euclid, which he at length under- 
stood without studying. The father of Petrarch' cast to 
the flames the poetical library of his son, amidst the shrieks, 
the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this burnt- 
offering neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor 
deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of Aleieri 
for more than twenty years suppressed the poetical character 
of this noble bard ; he was a poet without knowing how to 
write a verse, and Nature, like a hard creditor, exacted, with 
redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle had so long 
kept from her. These are the men whose inherent impulse 
no human opposition, and even no adverse education, can 
deter from proving them to be great men. 

Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius ; 
they have another association of ideas respecting him than 
ourselves. We see a great man, they a disobedient child ; we 
track him through his glory, they are wearied by the sullen 
resistance of one who is obscure and seems useless. The 
career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness ; and 
the father, who himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads 

* The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently in his 
boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the hack 
of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, " Done by Joshua out of 
pure idleness." Mignai'd distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching 
the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their diseases ; 
and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his busi- 
ness as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing with red 
chalk on the deal boards he had carefully planed for his trade. — Ed. 



Youthful Studies. 35 

lest his son be found among that obscure multitude, that 
populace of mean artists, self-deluded yet self-dissatisfied, who 
must expire at the barriers of mediocrity. 

If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed im- 
pulse, he will often be thrown into a train of secret instruc- 
tion which no master can impart. Hippocrates profoundly 
observed, that " our natures have not been taught us by any 
master." The faculty which the youth of genius displays in 
after-life may exist long ere it is perceived ; and it will only 
make its own what is homogeneous with itself. We may 
often observe how the mind of this youth stubbornly rejects 
whatever is contrary to its habits, and alien to its affections. 
Of a solitary character, for solitariness is the wild nurse of 
his contemplations, he is fancifully described by one of the 
race — and here fancies are facts : 

He is retired as noon-tide dew, 
Or fountain in a noon-day grove. 

The romantic Sidney exclaimed, " Eagles fly alone, and 
they are but sheep which always herd together." 

As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensations, 
is touched by rapid emotions, and disturbed by a vague rest- 
lessness ; for him the images of nature are yet dim, and he 
feels before he thinks ; for imagination precedes reflection. 
One truly inspired unfolds the secret story — 

Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow, 

The child of fancy oft in silence bends 

O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast 

With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves 

To frame he knows not what excelling things ; 

And win he knows not what sublime reward 

Of praise and wonder ! 

But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local in- 
fluence ; it is full of his own creations, of his unmarked pas- 
sions, and his uncertain thoughts. The titles which he gives 
his favourite haunts often intimate the bent of his mind — its 
employment, or its purpose ; as Peteakch called his retreat 
Linternum, after that of his hero Scipio ; and a young poet, 
from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he 
loved to muse in, " Cowley's Walk." 

A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken for 
melancholy.* " When the intermission of my studies allowed 

* This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth and 
James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently alluded 

D2 



36 Literary Character. 

me leisure for recreation," says Boyle of his early life, " I 
would very often steal away from all company, and spend 
four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at random ; 
making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some 
romance or other was daily acted." This circumstance 
alarmed his friends, who concluded that he was overcome 
with a growing melancholy. Alfieri found himself in this 
precise situation, and experienced these undefmable emotions, 
when, in his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only 
haunted the theatre and the seashore : the tragic drama was 
then casting its influences over his unconscious genius. 
Almost every evening, after bathing in the sea, it delighted 
him to retreat to a little recess where the land jutted out ; 
there would he sit, leaning his back against a high rock, 
which he tells us, " concealed from my sight every part of the 
land behind me, while before and around me I beheld nothing 
but the sea and the heavens : the sun, sinking into the waves, 
was lighting up and embellishing these two immensities ; there 
would I pass a delicious hour of fantastic ruminations, and 
there I should have composed many a poem, had I then 
known to write either in verse or prose in any language 
whatever." 

An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other 
noble and mighty spirit of our times, who could most truly 
exhibit the history of the youth of genius, and he has painted 
forth the enthusiasm of the boy Tasso : — 



From my very birth 



My soul was drunk with, love, which did pervade 
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth; 
Of objects all inanimate I made 
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers 
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise, 
Where I did lay me down within the shade 
Of waving trees, and dream' d uncounted hours, 
Though I was chid for wandering. 

The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active 
sports of his mates. Beattie paints himself in his own 
Minstrel : 

to by the satirists of the time. Ben Jonson, in his "Every Man in his 
Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting 
"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's 
your only fine humour, sir ; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine 
wit, sir."— Ed. 



Youthful Studies. 37 

Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled, 

Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray 
Of squabbling imps ; but to the forest sped. 

Bosstjet would not join his young companions, and flew to 
his solitary task, while the classical boys avenged themselves 
by a schoolboy's villanous pun : stigmatising the studious ap- 
plication of Bossuet by the bos suetus aratro which frequent 
flogging had made them classical enough to quote. 

The learned Huet has given an amusing detail of the in- 
ventive persecutions of his schoolmates, to divert him from 
his obstinate love of study. " At length, in order to indulge 
my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while they were 
buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might 
read and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and 
started in his burrow the future man of erudition. Sir 
William Jones was rarely a partaker in the active sports of 
Harrow ; it was said of Gray that he was never a boy ; the 
unhappy Chatter-ton and Burns were singularly serious in 
youth ;* as were Hobbes and Bacon. Milton has preserved 
for us, in solemn numbers, his school-life — 

When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing : all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
What might be public good : myself I thought 
Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
All righteous things. 

It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is re- 
tained throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely 
enamoured of common amusements or of robust exercises ; 
and he is usually unadroit where dexterity of hand or eye, or 
trivial elegances, are required. This characteristic of genius 
was discovered by Horace in that Ode which schoolboys 
often versify. Beattie has expressly told us of his Minstrel, 

The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed 
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring. 



* Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless levity 
of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy of 
maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many 
days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by con- 
straint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most 
serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says — " Bobert's 
countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious, contem- 
plative, and thoughtful mind. " — Ed. 



38 Literary Character. 

Aleieri said he could never be taught by a French dancing- 
master, whose art made him at once shudder and laugh. 
Horace, by his own confession, was a very awkward rider, 
and the poet could not always secure a seat on his mule : 
Metastasio humorously complains of his gun ; the poetical 
sportsman could only frighten the hares and partridges ; the 
truth was, as an elder poet sings, 

Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills 
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills, 
I, like the pleasing cadence of a line, 
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine. 

And we discover the true " humour" of the indolent contem- 
plative race in their great representatives Virgil and 
Horace. When they accompanied Mecsenas into the 
country, while the minister amused himself at tennis, the two 
bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the 
shade. The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary 
character, was charmed by the Eoman mode of hunting, or 
rather fowling by nets, which admitted him to sit a whole 
day with his tablets and stylus ; so, says he, " should I return 
with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." Thom- 
son was the hero of his own " Castle of Indolence ;" and the 
elegant Waller infuses into his luxurious verses the true 
feeling : 

Oh, how I long my careless limbs to lay 
Under the plantane shade, and all the day 
Invoke the Muses and improve my vein. 

The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after him- 
self, and I after observation, a poet of great genius, as I 
understand, has declared to be " too effeminate and timid, 
and too much troubled with delicate nerves. The greatest 
poets of all countries," he continues, " have been men emi- 
nently endowed with bodily powers, and rejoiced and excelled 
in all manly exercises." May not our critic of northern 
habits have often mistaken the art of the great poets in 
describing such " manly exercises or bodily powers," for the 
proof of their " rejoicing and excelling in them ?" Poets and 
artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and 
robust.* Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and 

* Dr. Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may be 
quoted here : " Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his 
constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the tempera- 



Early Habits. 39 

sedentary habits, will not combine with corporeal skill and 
activity. There is also a constitutional delicacy which is too 
often the accompaniment of a fine intellect. The incon- 
veniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are 
participated in by men of genius ; the analogy is obvious, and 
their fate is common. Literary men may be included in 
Ramazzini's " Treatise on the Diseases of Artizans." Ros- 
SEAU has described the labours of the closet as enervating 
men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the 
whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his 
strength, and renders him pusillanimous.* But there is a 
higher principle which guides us to declare, that men of genius 
should not excel in "all manly exercises." Seneca, whose 
habits were completely literary, admonishes the man of letters 
that " Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly 
return from those of the body to the mind, while he should 
be exercising the latter night and day." Seneca was aware 
that " to rejoice and excel in all manly exercises," would in 
some cases intrude into the habits of a literary man, and 
sometimes be even ridiculous. Mortimer, once a celebrated 
artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in fre- 
quent violent exercises ; and it is not without reason sus- 
pected, that habits so unfavourable to thought and study 
precluded that promising genius from attaining to the matu- 
rity of his talents, however he might have succeeded in 
invigorating his physical powers. 

But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of loneli- 
ness is an early passion, that two men of genius of very 
opposite characters, the one a French wit and the other a 
French philosopher, have acknowledged that they have felt 
its influence, and even imagined that they had discovered its 
cause. The Abbe de St. Pierre, in his political annals, tells 
us, " I remember to have heard old Segrais remark, that 
most young people of both sexes had at one time of their 
lives, generally about seventeen or eighteen years of age, an 
inclination to retire from the world. He maintained this to 
be a species of melancholy, and humorously called it the 

ment of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of life, to that 
interruption in the process of digestion which arises from deep and anxious 
thought, and which is sometimes the effect, and sometimes the cause, of 
depression of spirits." — Ed. 

* In the Preface to the " Narcisse." 



40 Literary Character. 

small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand 
escaped the attack. I myself have had this distemper, but 
am not much marked with it." 

But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordi- 
nary sports of his mates, he will often substitute for them 
others, which are the reflections of those favourite studies 
which are haunting his young- imagination, as men in their 
dreams repeat the conceptions which have habitually inte- 
rested them. The amusements of such an idler have often 
been analogous to his later pursuits. Ariosto, while yet a 
schoolboy, seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for 
he composed a sort of tragedy from the story of Pyramus and 
Thisbe, to be represented by his brothers and sisters, and at 
this time also delighted himself in translating the old French 
and Spanish romances. Sir William Jones, at Harrow, 
divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each 
schoolfellow portioned out a dominion ; and when wanting a 
copy of the Tempest to act from, he supplied it from his 
memory ; we must confess that the boy Jones was reflecting 
in his amusements the cast of mind he displayed in his after- 
life, and evincing that felicity of memory and taste so preva- 
lent in his literary character. Florian's earliest years were 
passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening 
an old translation of the Iliad : whenever he got a bird 
remarkable for its size or its plumage, he personified it by one 
of the names of his heroes, and raising a funeral pyre, con- 
sumed the body : collecting the ashes in an urn, he presented 
them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his Patroclus 
or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish 
sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, 
Gonsalvo of Cordova, and William Tell. Bacojst, when a 
child, was so remarkable for thoughtful observation, that 
Queen Elizabeth used to call him "the young lord-keeper." 
The boy made a remarkable reply, when her Majesty, inquiring 
of him his age, he said, that " He was two years younger 
than her Majesty's happy reign." The boy may have been 
tutored; but this mixture of gravity, and ingenuity, and 
political courtiership, undoubtedly caught from his father's 
habits, afterwards characterised Lord Bacon's manhood. I 
once read the letter of a contemporary of Hobbes, where I 
found that this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on 
packs of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was 
a fellmonger; and that in the market-place he thus early 



Boyhood. 41 

began, to vent his private opinions, which long afterwards so 
fully appeared in his writings. 

For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a 
criterion of talent. At that moment of life, with no flattery 
on the one side, and no artifice on the other, all emotion and 
no reflection, the boy who has obtained a predominance has 
acquired this merely by native powers. The boyhood of 
Nelson was characterised by events congenial with those of 
his after-days ; and his father understood his character when 
he declared that, " in whatever station he might be placed, he 
would climb, if possible, to the top of the tree." Some 
puerile anecdotes which Franklin remembered of himself, 
betray the invention and the firm intrepidity of his character, 
and even perhaps his carelessness of means to obtain a pur- 
pose. In boyhood he felt a desire for adventure ; but as his 
father would not consent to a sea life, he made the river near 
him represent the ocean : he lived on the water, and was the 
daring Columbus of a schoolboy's boat. A part where he and 
his mates stood to angle, in time became a quagmire : in the 
course of one day, the infant projector thought of a wharf for 
them to stand on, and raised it with a heap of stones depo- 
sited there for the building of a house. With that sort of 
practical wisdom, or Ulyssean cunning, which marked his 
mature character, Franklin raised his wharf at the expense of 
another's house. His contrivances to aid his puny labourers, 
with his resolution not to quit the great work till it was 
effected, seem to strike out to us the invention and decision 
of his future character. But the qualities which would 
attract the companions of a schoolboy may not be those 
which are essential to fine genius. The captain or leader of 
his schoolmates is not to be disregarded ; but it is the seques- 
tered boy who may chance to be the artist or the literary cha- 
racter. Some facts which have been recorded of men of genius 
at this period are remarkable. We are told by Miss Stewart that 
Johnson, when a boy at the free-school, appeared " a huge 
overgrown misshapen stripling ;" but was considered as a 
stupendous stripling : " for even at that early period of life, 
Johnson maintained his opinions with the same sturdy, dog- 
matical, and arrogant fierceness." The puerile characters of 
Lord Bolingbroke and Sir Robert Walpole, schoolfellows 
and rivals, were observed to prevail through their after-life ; 
the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his 
attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities 



42 Literary Character. 

triumphed by resistance. A parallel instance might be 
pointed out in two great statesmen of our own days ; in the 
wisdom of the one, and the wit of the other — men whom 
nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as it 
happened. A curious observer, in looking over a collection of 
the Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its 
students, has remarked that " Cowley from the first was 
quaint, Milton sublime, and Barrow copious." If then the 
characteristic disposition may reveal itself thus early, it affords 
a principle which ought not to be neglected at this obscure 
period of youth. 

Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks 
of the character of genius ? The natures of men are as 
various as their fortunes. Some, like diamonds, must wait to 
receive their splendour from the slow touches of the polisher, 
while others, resembling pearls, appear at once born with their 
beauteous lustre. 

Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of 
the first attempts ; and we must not decide on the talents of 
a young man by his first works. Driden and Swift might 
have been deterred from authorship had their earliest pieces 
decided their fate. Smollett, before he knew which way 
his genius would conduct him, had early conceived a high 
notion of his talents for dramatic poetry : his tragedy of the 
Regicide was refused by Garrick, whom for a long time he 
could not forgive, but continued to abuse our Roscius, 
through his works of genius, for having discountenanced his 
first work, which had none. Racine's earliest composition, 
as we may judge by some fragments his son has preserved, 
remarkably contrasts with his writings ; for these fragments 
abound with those points and conceits which he afterwards 
abhorred. The tender author of " Andromache" could not 
have been discovered while exhausting himself in running 
after concetti as surprising as the worst parts of Cowley, in 
whose spirit alone he could have hit on this perplexing con- 
cetto, descriptive of Aurora : " Fille du Jour, qui nais devant 
ton pere !" — " Daughter of Day, but born before thy father !" 
Gibbon betrayed none of the force and magnitude of his 
powers in his " Essay on Literature," or his attempted 
" History of Switzerland." Johnson's cadenced prose is 
not recognisable in the humbler simplicity of his earliest 
years. Many authors have begun unsuccessfully the walk 
they afterwards excelled in. Raphael, when he first drew 



Boyhood. 43 

his meagre forms under Perugino, had not yet conceived one 
line of that ideal "beauty which one day he of all men could 
alone execute. Who could have imagined, in examining the 
Dream of Raphael, that the same pencil could hereafter have 
poured out the miraculous Transfiguration ? Or that, in the 
imitative pupil of Hudson, our country was at length to pride 
herself on another Raphael ?* 

Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by his 
companions, and, like iEneas, he may be hidden in a cloud 
amidst his associates. The celebrated Fabius Maximtjs in 
his boyhood was called in derision "the little sheep," from 
the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His sedateness 
and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his 
slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission 
to his equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecover- 
ably stupid. The greatness of mind, unalterable courage, 
and invincible character, which Fabius afterwards displayed, 
they then imagined had lain concealed under the apparent 
contrary qualities. The boy of genius may indeed seem slow 
and dull even to the phlegmatic ; for thoughtful and observ- 
ing dispositions conceal themselves in timorous silent cha- 
racters, who have not yet experienced their strength ; and 
that assiduous love, which cannot tear itself away from the 
secret instruction it is perpetually imbibing, cannot be easily 
distinguished from the pertinacity of the mere plodder. We 
often hear, from the early companions of a man of genius, 
that at school he appeared heavy and unpromising. Rousseau 
imagined that the childhood of some men is accompanied by 
this seeming and deceitful dulness, which is the sign of a 
profound genius ; and Roger Ascham has placed among "the 
best natures for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted 
child;" that is, the thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow. 
The young painters, to ridicule the persevering labours of 
Domektchi^o, which were at first heavy and unpromising, 
called him " the great ox ;" and Passeri, while he has happily 
expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, sua taci- 
turna lentezza, his silent slowness, expresses his surprise at 
the accounts he received of the early life of this great artist. 

* Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter who succeeded Kneller, 
and made a great reputation and fortune ; but he was a very mean artist, 
who merely copied the peculiarities of his predecessor without his genius. 
His stiff hard style was formality itself ; but was approved in an age of 
formalism ; the earlier half of the last century. — Ed. 



44 Literary Character. 

" It is difficult to believe, what many assert, that, from the 
beginning, this great painter had a ruggedness about him 
which entirely incapacitated him from learning his profession; 
and they have heard from himself that he quite despaired of 
success. Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious 
talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accompanied 
with such favourable dispositions for the art, would show 
such signs of utter incapacity ; I rather think that it is a 
mistake in the proper knowledge of genius, which some ima- 
gine indicates itself most decisively by its sudden vehemence, 
showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing 
away." 

A parallel case we find in Goldsmith, who passed through 
an unpromising }^outh ; he declared that he was never at- 
tached to literature till he was thirty ; that poetry had no 
peculiar charms for him till that age ; # and, indeed, to his 
latest hour he was surprising his friends by productions which 
they had imagined he was incapable of composing. Htjme 
was considered, for his sobriety and assiduity, as competent 
to become a steady merchant ; and it was said of Boileau 
that he had no great understanding, but would speak ill of 
no one. This circumstance of the character in youth being 
entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the subsequent one 
of maturer life, has been noticed of many. Even a dis- 
cerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the 
genius of the youth, who has afterwards ranked among 
eminent men ; we ought as little to decide from early un- 
favourable appearances, as from inequality of talent. The 
great Isaac Barrow's father used to say, that if it pleased 
God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might 
be Isaac, as the least promising ; and during the three years 
Barrow passed at the Charter-house, he was remarkable only 
for the utter negligence of his studies and of his person. The 
mother of Sheridan, herself a literary female, pronounced 
early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her sons. 
Bodmer, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who 
had so frequently discovered and animated the literary youths 
of his country, could never detect the latent genius of 
Gesner : after a repeated examination of the young man, he 
put his parents in despair with the hopeless award that a 

* This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith : but it is much more 
so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the following chapter, 
on "The First Studies," p. 56. 



Boyhood. 45 

mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to mere writ- 
ing and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had over- 
looked when he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist — 
the dull youth, who could not retain barren words, discovered 
an active fancy in the image of things. While at his gram- 
mar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was employing 
tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, 
and other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted 
the fingers of our infant moulder, who never ceased working 
to amuse his little sisters with his waxen creatures, which 
constituted all his happiness. Those arts of imitation were 
already possessing the soul of the boy Gresner, to which 
afterwards it became so entirely devoted. 

Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education 
of the youth may not be the education of his genius ; he 
lives unknown to himself and others. In all these cases na- 
ture had dropped the seeds in the soil : but even a happy 
disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances : 
I repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is 
homogeneous with its nature. It has happened to some 
men of genius during a long period of their lives, that an un- 
settled impulse, unable to discover the object of its apti- 
tude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a 
being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can 
attach itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, 
weary with the burthen of existence ; but the instant the 
latent talent had declared itself, his first work, the eager off- 
spring of desire and love, has astonished the world at once 
with the birth and the maturity of genius. 

We are told that Peleghino Tibaldi, who afterwards 
obtained the glorious title of " the reformed Michael Angelo," 
long felt the strongest internal dissatisfaction at his own 
proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy and despair, he 
had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to death : 
his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to 
change his pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon 
rose to eminence. This story D'Argenville throws some 
doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty years abstained 
from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained by 
an extraordinary occurrence. Tasso, with feverish anxiety 
pondered on five different subjects before he could decide in the 
choice of his epic ; the same embarrassment was long the fate 
of Gibbon on the subject of his history. Some have sunk into 



46 Literary Character. 

a deplorable state of utter languishment, from the circum- 
stance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their be- 
loved study, as in the case of the chemist Bergman. His 
friends, to gain him over to the more lucrative professions, 
deprived him of his books of natural history ; a plan which 
nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with declining health 
quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle with 
the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for 
his favourite science restored the health he had lost in aban- 
doning it. 

It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully 
influenced the innate genius of Boccaccio, and fixed his in- 
stant decision. As yet young, and in the neighbourhood of 
Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached the tomb of the 
Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to 
meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, 
he lamented his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure 
details of merchandise ; already he sighed to emulate the 
fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells us, from that day he 
abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce, dedicating 
himself to literature. Proctor, the lost Phidias of our 
country, would often say, that he should never have quitted 
his mercantile situation, but for the accidental sight of 
Barry's picture of "Venus rising from the Sea;" a picture 
which produced so immediate an effect on his mind, that it 
determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we 
cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and 
such instant decisions, but by the principle of that predispo- 
sition which only waits for an occasion to declare itself. 

Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering 
itself in youth. In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits 
precocity. " Whatever a young man at first applies himself 
to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This remark was 
made by Hartley, who has related an anecdote of the in- 
fancy of his genius, which indicated the manhood. He de- 
clared to his daughter that the intention of writing a book 
upon the nature of man, was conceived in his mind when he 
was a very little boy — when swinging backwards and for- 
wards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old ; he 
was then meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how 
man was made, and for what future end. Such was the true 
origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his celebrated book on 
" The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." John 



Early Bias. 47 

Hunter conceived his notion of the principle of life, which 
to his last day formed the subject of his inquiries and expe- 
riments, when he was very young ; for at that period of life, 
Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his observations on the 
incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his opinions. 

A learned friend, and aa observer of men of science, has 
supplied me with a remark highly deserving notice. It is an 
observation that will generally hold good, that the most 
important systems of theory, however late they may be pub- 
lished, have been formed at a very early period of life. This 
important observation may be verified by some striking 
facts. A most curious one will be found in Lord Bacon's 
letter to Father Fulgentio, where he gives an account of his 
projecting his philosophy thirty years before, during his 
youth. Milton from early youth mused on the composition 
of an epic. De Thou has himself told us, that from his 
tender youth his mind was full of the idea of composing a 
history of his own times ; and his whole life was passed in 
preparation, and in a continued accession of materials for a 
future period. From the age of twenty, Montesquieu was 
preparing the materials of IS Esprit des Loix, by extracts 
from the immense volumes of civil law. Tillemont's vast 
labours were traced out in his mind at the early age of nine- 
teen, on reading Baronius ; and some of the finest passages 
in Racine's tragedies were composed while a pupil, wan- 
dering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that 
the seeds of many of our great literary and scientific works 
were lying, for many years antecedent to their being given 
to the world, in a latent state of germination.* 

The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters 
and poets, who were such before they understood the nature 

* I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among the 
illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my delightful 
researches. But with the middling as well as with the great, the same 
habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive philo- 
sophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy ; and I 
had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I 
quoted it thirty years ago, that " Abstract or general propositions, though 
never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are ex- 
plained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Disserta- 
tion on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I 
deduced results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. 
From that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running 
in this mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and 
anecdotes into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end. 



48 Literary Character. 

of colours and the arts of verse ; and this vehement propen- 
sity, so mysteriously constitutional, may be traced in other 
intellectual characters besides those which belong to the class 
of imagination. It was said that Pitt was horn a. minister; 
the late Dr. Shaw I always considered as one born a natu- 
ralist, and I know a great literar} T antiquary who seems to 
me to have been also born such ; for the passion of curiosity 
is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with some casts of mind, 
as is that of invention with poets and painters : I confess that 
to me it is genius in a form in which genius has not yet been 
suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir Hans 
Sloake expresses himself in this manner : — " Our author's 
thirst for knowledge seems to have been born with him, so 
that his Cabinet of Barities may be said to have commenced 
with his being" This strange metaphorical style has only 
confused an obscure truth. Sloane, early in life, felt an 
irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most en- 
larged views of the productions of nature, and he exulted in 
their accomplishment ; for in his will he has solemnly re- 
corded, that his collections were the fruits of his early devo- 
tion, having had from my youth a strong inclination to the 
study of plants and all other productions of nature. The 
vehement passion of Peibesc for knowledge, according to 
accounts which Gassendi received from old men who had 
known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had been 
taught his alphabet ; for then his delight was to be handling 
books and papers, and his perpetual inquiries after their con- 
tents obliged them to invent something to quiet the child's 
insatiable curiosity, who was hurt when told that he had not 
the capacity to understand them. He did not study as an 
ordinary scholar, for he never read but with perpetual re- 
searches. At ten years of age, his passion for the studies of 
antiquity was kindled at the sight of some ancient coins dug 
up in his neighbourhood ; then that vehement passion for 
knowledge " began to burn like fire in a forest," as Gassendi 
happily describes the fervour and amplitude of the mind of 
this man of vast learning. Bayle, who was an experienced 
judge in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of 
whom was haunted by a strong disposition to genealogical, 
and the other to geographical pursuits, that, " let a man do 
what he will, if nature incline us to certain things, there is 
no preventing the gratification of our desire, though it lies 
hid under a monk's frock." It is not, therefore, as the world 



Youthful Studies. 49 

is apt to imagine, only poets and painters for whom is reserved 
this restless and impetuous propensity for their particular 
pursuits ; I claim it for the man of science as well as for the 
man of imagination. And I confess that I consider this 
strong bent of the mind in men eminent in pursuits in which 
imagination is little concerned, and whom men of genius have 
chosen to remove so far from their class, as another gifted 
aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius, 
and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, of 
" their thirst for knowledge." 

But to return to the men of genius who answer more 
strictly to the popular notion of inventors. We have Boc- 
caccio's own words for a proof of his early natural tendency 
to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of the gods : — 
" Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no 
stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, 
I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some little 
tales." Thus the " Decamerone" was appearing much earlier 
than we suppose. Descaetes, while yet a boy, indulged such 
habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his com- 
panions " The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever 
settling the cause and the effect. He was twenty-five years 
of age before he left the army, but the propensity for medita- 
tion had been early formed; and he has himself given an 
account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of the 
progress of his genius ; of the secret struggle which he so 
long maintained with his own mind, wandering in conceal- 
ment over the world for more than twenty years, and, as he 
says of himself, like the statuary labouring to draw out a 
Minerva from the marble block. Michael Afgelo, as yet 
a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing ; and 
when his noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was dis- 
turbing the line of their ancestry, forced him to relinquish 
the pencil, the infant artist flew to the chisel : the art which 
was in his soul would not allow of idle hands. Lope de 
Vega, Velasquez, Aeiosto, and Tasso, are all said to have 
betrayed at their school-tasks the most marked indications of 
their subsequent characteristics. 

This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in Mu- 
eillo. This young artist was undistinguished at the place 
of his birth. A brother artist returning home from London, 
where he had studied under Yan Dyk, surprised Mueillo by 
a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, manner. Instantly 

E 



50 Literary Character. 

he conceived the project of quitting his native Seville and 
flying to Italy — the fever of genius broke forth with all its 
restlessness. But he was destitute of the most ordinary 
means to pursue a journey, and forced to an expedient, he 
purchased a piece of canvas, which dividing into parts, he 
painted on each figures of saints, landscapes, and flowers — 
an humble merchandise of art adapted to the taste and devout 
feelings of the times, and which were readily sold to the 
adventurers to the Indies. With these small means he de- 
parted, having communicated his project to no one except to 
a beloved sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the 
lad at home ; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to 
the perils and the impracticability of his wild project. He 
reached Madrid, where the great Velasquez, his country- 
man, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the youth, 
who urgently requested letters for Rome ; but when that 
noble genius understood the purport of this romantic journey, 
Velasquez assured him that he need not proceed to Italy to 
learn the art he loved. The great master opened the royal 
galleries to the youth, and cherished his studies. Mtjrillo 
returned to his native city, where, from his obscurity, he had 
never been missed, having ever lived a retired life of silent 
labour ; but this painter of nature returned to make the city 
which had not noticed his absence the theatre of his glory. 

The same imperious impulse drove C allot, at the age of 
twelve years, from his father's roof. His parents, from pre- 
judices of birth, had conceived that the art of engraving was 
one beneath the studies of their son ; but the boy had listened 
to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and with a curiosity 
predominant over any self-consideration, one morning the 
genius flew away. Many days had not elapsed, when rinding 
himself in the utmost distress, with a gang of gipsies he 
arrived at Florence. A merchant of Nancy discovered him, 
and returned the reluctant boy of genius to his home. Again 
he flies to Italy, and again his brother discovers him, and 
reconducts him to his parents. The father, whose patience 
and forgiveness were now exhausted, permitted his son to 
become the most original genius of French art — one who, 
in his vivacious groups, the touch of his graver, and the 
natural expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of 
Hogarth. 

Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See the boy 
Nanteuil hiding himself in a tree to pursue the delightful 






Youthful Studies. 51 

exercise of his pencil, while his parents are averse to their son 
practising his young art ! See Handel, intended for a doctor 
of the civil laws, and whom no parental discouragement could 
deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching harpsichords, and 
having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a retired 
apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he 
awakens his harmonious spirit ! Observe Fekguson, the child 
of a peasant, acquiring the art of reading without any one 
suspecting it, by listening to his father teaching his brother ; 
observe him making a wooden watch without the slightest 
knowledge of mechanism ; and while a shepherd, studying, 
like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, 
on a celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great 
mechanic, Smeaton, when a child, disdained the ordinary 
playthings of his age ; he collected the tools of workmen, 
observed them at their work, and asked questions till he could 
work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, 
the child was shortly after, to the distress of the family, dis- 
covered in a situation of extreme danger, fixing up at the 
top of a barn a rude windmill. Many circumstances of this 
nature occurred before his sixth year. His father, an attor- 
ney, sent him up to London to be brought up to the same 
profession ; but lie declared that " the study of the law did 
not suit the bent of his genius" — a term he frequently used. 
He addressed a strong memorial to his father, to show his 
utter incompetency to study law ; and the good sense of the 
father abandoned Smeaton " to the bent of his genius in his 
own way." Such is the history of the man who raised the 
Eddystone Lighthouse, in the midst of the waves, like the rock 
on which it stands. 

Can we hesitate to believe that in such minds there was a 
resistless and mysterious propensity, " growing with the 
growth " of these youths, who seem to have been placed out 
of the influence of that casual excitement, or any other of 
those sources of genius, so frequently assigned for its pro- 
duction ? 

Yet these cases are not more striking than one related of 
the Abbe La Caille, who ranked among the first astrono- 
mers of the age. La Caille was the son of the parish clerk of 
a village. At the age of ten years his father sent him every 
evening to ring the church bell, but the bo} r always returned 
home late : his father was angry, and beat him, and still the 
boy returned an hour after he had rung the bell. The father. 

E 2 



52 Literary Character. 

suspecting something mysterious in his conduct, one evening 
watched him. He saw his son ascend the steeple, ring the 
bell as usual, and remain there during an hour. When the 
unlucky boy descended, he trembled like one caught in the 
fact, and on his knees confessed that the pleasure he took in 
watching the stars from the steeple was the real cause which 
detained him from home. As the father was not born to be 
an astronomer, he flogged his son severely. The youth was 
found weeping in the streets by a man of science, who, when 
he discovered in a boy of ten years of age a passion for con- 
templating the stars at night, and one, too, who had discovered 
an observatory in a steeple, decided that the seal of Nature 
had impressed itself on the genius of that boy. Believing 
the parent from the son, and the son from the parent, he 
assisted the young La Caille in his passionate pursuit, and 
the event completely justified the prediction. How children 
feel a predisposition for the studies of astronomy, or mechanics, 
or architecture, or natural history, is that secret in nature we 
have not guessed. There may be a virgin thought as well as 
a virgin habit — nature before education — which first opens 
the mind, and ever afterwards is shaping its tender folds. 
Accidents may occur to call it forth, but thousands of youths 
have found themselves in parallel situations with Smeaton, 
Ferguson, and La Caille, without experiencing their 
energies. 

The case of Clairon, the great French tragic actress, who 
seems to have been an actress before she saw a theatre, de- 
serves attention. This female, destined to be a sublime 
tragedian, was of the lowest extraction ; the daughter of a 
violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces, 
was driving about the child all day to manual labour. " I 
know not," says Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I 
could not bear the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to- 
remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh year, being 
locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows 
fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new 
object instantly absorbed her attention. In the house oppo- 
site she observed a celebrated actress amidst her family ; her 
daughter was performing her dancing lesson : the girl Clairon, 
the future Melpomene, was struck by the influence of this 
graceful and affectionate scene. "All my little being col- 
lected itself into my eyes ; I lost not a single motion ; as soon 
as the lesson ended, all the family applauded, and the mother 



Youthful Studies. 53 

embraced the daughter. The difference of her fate and mine 
filled me with profound grief; my tears hindered me from 
seeing any longer, and when the palpitations of my heart 
allowed me to re-ascend the chair, all had disappeared." This 
scene was a discovery ; from that moment Clairon knew no 
rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to confine 
her in that room. The happy girl was a divinity to the un- 
happy one, whose susceptible genius imitated her in every 
gesture and every motion ; and Clairon soon showed the effect 
of her ardent studies. She betrayed in the common inter- 
course of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she 
charmed her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother ; 
in a word, the enthusiastic girl was an actress without know- 
ing what an actress was. 

In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that 
the accidental view of a young actress practising her studies 
imparted the character of Clairon ? Could a mere chance 
occurrence have given birth to those faculties which produced 
a sublime tragedian ? In all arts there are talents which may 
be acquired by imitation and reflection, — and thus far may 
genius be educated ; but there are others which are entirely 
the result of native sensibility, which often secretly torment 
the possessor, and which may even be lost from the want of 
development, dissolved into a state of languor from which 
many have not recovered. Clairon, before she saw the young 
actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre — for she had 
never entered one — had in her soul that latent faculty which 
creates a dramatic genius. " Had I not felt like Dido," she 
once exclaimed, " I could not have thus personified her !" 

The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility 
of the childhood of genius, is probably little known to us ; 
but we may perceive them also working in the moral charac- 
ter, which frequently discovers itself in childhood, and which 
manhood cannot always conceal, however it may alter. The 
intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably closely 
allied. Erasmus acquaints us, that Sir Thomas Moee had 
something ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile, — a fea- 
ture which his portraits preserve ; and that he was more 
inclined to pleasantr}' and jesting, than to the gravity of the 
chancellor. This circumstance he imputes to Sir Thomas 
More " being from a child so delighted with humour, that 
he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he 
died as he had lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who 



54 Literary Character. 

came at length to regret that he had but one world to con- 
quer, betrayed the majesty of his restless genius when but a 
youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join in 
the course, the princely boy replied, that " He would run in 
no career where kings were not the competitors," the pre- 
scient tutor might have recognised in his pupil the future and 
successful rival of Darius and Porus. 

A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one 
of his attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile 
anecdotes, which made me feel very forcibly that there are 
some children who deserve to have a biographer at their side ; 
but anecdotes of children are the rarest of biographies, and I 
deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have recovered 
such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.* 
Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in Aenauld's 
infancy, which, considered in connexion with his subsequent 
life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions re- 
ceived in the first dawn of reason. Aknauld, who, to his 
eightieth year, passed through a life of theological controversy, 
when a child, amusing himself in the library of the Cardinal 
Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. " For what 
purpose ?" inquired the cardinal. " To write books, like you, 
against the Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, 
could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a suc- 
cessor; and placing the pen in his hand, said, " I give it you 
as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his pipe to the 
little Corydon." Other children might have asked for a pen 
— but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling 
and a wider association of ideas, indicating the future polemic. 

Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of 
that instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, some- 
times called organization, which has inflamed a war of words 
by an equivocal terra. We repeat that this faculty of genius 
can exist independent of education, and where it is wanting 
education can never confer it : it is an impulse, an instinct 
always working in the character of " the chosen mind ;" 

One with our feelings and our powers, 
And rather part of us, than ours. 

In the history of genius there are unquestionably many 

* I have preserved this manuscript narrative in "Curiosities of Lite- 
rature," vol. ii. 



Youthful Studies. 55 

secondary causes of considerable influence in developing, or 
even crushing the germ — these have been of late often de- 
tected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous extreme; but 
among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies 
and the first habits. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities. 
— Their errors. — Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they 
incur. — The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn. — Friends 
usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. — A remarkable interview be- 
tween Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary adviser. — Exhorta- 
tion. 

The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and 
unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. 
Often have the first impressions stamped a character on the 
mind adapted to receive one, as the first step into life has 
often determined its walk. But this, for ourselves, is a far 
distant period in our existence, which is lost in the horizon 
of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others. 
Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not 
fortunate, and some which have hardened the character in its 
mould, may, however, be traced to this period. Physicians 
tell us that there is a certain point in youth at which the 
constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life revolves ; 
the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period. 
Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instruc- 
tions, all the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are 
those evil spirits which will dog genius to its grave. An 
early attachment to the works of Sir Thomas Browne pro- 
duced in Johnson an excessive admiration of that Latinised 
English, which violated the native graces of the language ; 
and the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself " to the 
constant habit of speaking one language, and writing another." 
The first studies of Eembrandt affected his after-labours. 
The peculiarity of shadow which marks all his pictures, 
originated in the circumstance of his father's mill receiving 
light from an aperture at the top, which' habituated the artist 
afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light. 
The intellectual Poussin, as Nicholas has been called, could 
never, from an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, 



56 Literary Character. 

extricate his genius on the canvas from the hard forms of 
marble : he sculptured with his pencil ; and that cold austerity 
of tone, still more remarkable in his last pictures, as it became 
mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance. When Pope 
was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of 
mystical devotion ; but it was not suspected, till the fact was 
discovered, that the effusions of love and religion poured forth 
in his "Eloisa" were caught from the seraphic raptures of 
those erotic mystics, who to the last retained a place in his 
library among the classical bards of antiquity. The acci- 
dental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made Boyle, to use 
his own words, " in love with other than pedantic books, and 
conjured up in him an unsatisfied appetite of knowledge ; so 
that he thought he owed more to Quintus Curtius than did 
Alexander." From the perusal of Eycaut's folio of Turkish 
history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of 
our times retained those indelible impressions which gave life 
and motion to the " Giaour," " the Corsair," and " Alp." A 
voyage to the country produced the scenery. Rycaut only 
communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the poeti- 
cal character ; and without this Turkish history we should 
still have had the poet.* 

The influence of first studies in the formation of the 

* The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage, cannot 
fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers into the his- 
tory of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his first readings 
will not alter the tendency of my conjecture ; it only proves that he had 
read much more of Eastern history and manners than Eycaut's folio, which 
probably led to this class of books : 

" Knolles— Cantemir— De Tott— Lady M. W. Montagu— Hawkins's 
translation from Mignot's History of the Turks — the Arabian Nights — all 
travels or histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, 
as well as Rycaut, before I was ten years old. I think the Arabian 
Nights first. After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don 
Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was 
passionate for the Roman History. 

' ' When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever without 
disgust and reluctance." — MS. note by Lord Byron. Latterly Lord Byron 
acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count Gramba, not 
long before he died, " The Turkish History was one of the first books that 
gave me pleasure when a child ; and I believe it had much influence on my 
subsequent wishes to visit the Levant ; and gave perhaps the Oriental 
colouring which is observed in my poetry." 

I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now preserve 
it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character : 

' ' When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman than 
poet, and have often regretted since that I did not. 1818." 



Youthful Studies. 57 

character of genius is a moral phenomenon which has not 
sufficiently attracted our notice. Frankly acquaints us that, 
when young and wanting hooks, he accidentally found De 
Foe's "Essay on Projects," from which work impressions 
were derived which afterwards influenced some of the princi- 
pal events of his life. The lectures of Reynolds probably 
originated in the essays of Richardson. It is acknowledged 
that these first made him a painter, and not long afterwards 
an author ; and it is said that many of the principles in his 
lectures may be traced in those first studies. Many were the 
indelible and glowing impressions caught by the ardent Rey- 
nolds from those bewildering pages of enthusiasm ! Sir 
Walter Rawleigh, according to a family tradition, when a 
young man, was perpetually reading and conversing on the 
discoveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and 
Pizarro. His character, as well as the great events of his 
life, seem to have been inspired by his favourite histories ; to 
pass beyond the discoveries of the Spaniards became a pas- 
sion, and the vision of his life. It is formally testified that, 
from a copy of Yegetius de Be Militari, in the school library 
of St. Paul's, Marlbokough imbibed his passion for a mili- 
tary life. If he could not understand the text, the prints 
were, in such a mind, sufficient to awaken the passion for 
military glory. Rousseau in early youth, full of his Plu- 
tarch, while he was also devouring the trash of romances, 
could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be 
affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering 
all his faculties ; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a 
Sybarite. The same circumstance happened to Catherine 
Macatjlet, who herself has told us how she owed the bent of 
her character to the early reading of the Roman historians ; 
but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she 
violated truth in English characters, and exaggerated romance 
in her Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias 
in the youth of genius, impelling the whole current of his 
after-life, is strikingly displayed in the remarkable character 
of Archdeacon Blackbtjrne, the author of the famous 
" Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written 
with such a republican fierceness. 

I had long considered the character of our archdeacon as a 
lusus politicus et theologicus. Having subscribed to the 
Articles, and enjoying the archdeaconry, he was writing 
against subscription and the whole hierarchy, with a spirit so 



58 Literary Character. 

irascible and caustic, that one would have suspected that, like 
Prynne and Basfcwick, the archdeacon had already lost both 
his ears ; while his antipathy to monarchy might have done 
honour to a Eoundhead of "the Rota Club. The secret of 
these volcanic explosions was only revealed in a letter acci- 
dentally preserved. In the youth of our spirited archdeacon, 
when fox-hunting was his deepest study, it happened at the 
house of a relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among 
other garret lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had 
once been the careful collections of his great-grandfather, an 
Oliverian justice. "These," says he, "I conveyed to my 
lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the manners 
and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid 
the foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved ! 
Archdeacon Blackburne, in his seclusion in Yorkshire 
amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows that we are in 
want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire 
might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha ; for 
political romances, it is presumed, may be as fertile of ridi- 
cule as any of the folios of chivalry. 

We may thus mark the influence through life of those first 
unobserved impressions on the character of genius, which 
every author has not recorded. 

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, pro- 
duces nothing on the idde of genius. Where education ends, 
genius often begins. Gray was asked if he recollected when 
he first felt the strong predilection to poetry ; he replied that, 
" he believed it was when he began to read Virgil for his own 
amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the 
force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiolo- 
gist, John Htjntek, who was entirely self-educated, evinced 
such penetration in his anatomical discoveries, that he has 
brought into notice passages from writers he was unable to 
read, and which had been overlooked by profound scholars.* 

That the education of genius must be its own work, we 
may appeal to every one of the family. It is not always for- 

* Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is curiously 
illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge of 
plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain 
phases of disease, which hal afterwards been "overlooked by the most 
profound scholars for nearly two thousand years," until John Hunter by 
his own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.] 



Self-Education. 59 

tunate, for many die amidst a waste of talents and the wreck 
of mind. 

Many a soul sublime 
Has felt the influence of malignant star. 

An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction 
in the course of this self-education ; and a man of genius, 
through half his life, has held a contest with a bad, or with 
no education. There is a race of the late-taught, who, with a 
capacity of leading in the first rank, are mortified to discover 
themselves only on a level with their contemporaries. Wns'c- 
kelmann, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a village 
schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with 
his avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a school- 
master with the greatest punctuality ; and I taught the 
A, B, C, to children with filthy heads, at the moment I was 
aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful, and meditating, 
low to myself, on the similes of Homer ; then I said to my- 
self, as I still say, ' Peace, my soul, thy strength shall sur- 
mount thy cares.' " The obstructions of so unhappy a self- 
education essentially injured his ardent genius, and long he 
secretly sorrowed at this want of early patronage, and these 
habits of life so discordant with the habits of his mind. " I 
am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named 
6>fn(ta0cis, sero sapientes, the late-learned, for I have appeared 
too late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, 
it was necessary that I should have had an education analo- 
gous to my pursuits, and at your age." This class of the 
late-learned is a useful distinction. It is so with a sister-art ; 
one of the greatest musicians of our country assures me that 
the ear is as latent with many ; there are the late-learned even 
in the musical world. BtjdvEtjs declared that he was both 
'•self-taught and late-taught." 

The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities. 
Often abounding with talent, but rarely with talent in its 
place, their native prodigality has to dread a plethora of 
genius and a delirium of wit : or else, hard but irregular stu- 
dents rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled know- 
ledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation 
and stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended 
to the process of their own minds, and little acquainted with 
that of other men, they cannot throw out their intractable 
knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by its softening 



60 Literary Character. 

touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native 
impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not 
always discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it 
has happened with some of this race, that their first work has 
not announced genius, and their last is stamped with it. 
Some are often judged by their first work, and when they 
have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is acknowledged. 
They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even 
contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to 
meet ; and when once they have learned what is beautiful, they 
discover a living but unsuspected source in their own wild but 
unregarded originality. Glorying in their strength at the 
time that they are betraying their weakness, yet are they still 
mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its 
own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius 
with its creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul ; 
it will work itself out beneath the encumbrance of the most un- 
cultivated minds, even amidst the deep perplexed feelings and 
the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary enthusiast, 
who is often only a man of genius misplaced.* We may find 
a whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers 
of the old romances, and the ancient ballads of European 
nations ; there sleep many a Homer and Virgil — legitimate 
heirs of their genius, though possessors of decayed estates. 
BuisrYAisr is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned 
towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic. 

Barky, the painter, has left behind him works not to be 
turned over by the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who 
dares not be just. That enthusiast, with a temper of mind 
resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser feelings, was the 
same creature of untamed imagination consumed by the same 
passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the 
same fortitude of soul ; but he found his self-taught pen, like 
his pencil, betray his genius.f A vehement enthusiasm 

* ' l One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own ex- 
perience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the 
nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and 
celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much ful- 
ness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of George 
Fox and Jacob Behmen." — Mr. Coleridge's Biograpliia Litteraria, i. 143. 

f Like Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his ori- 
ginality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical 
labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty, 
but greater vigour. — Ed. 



Self-Education. 61 

breaks through his ill-composed works, throwing the sparks 
of his bold conceptions into the soul of the youth of genius. 
When, in his character of professor, he delivered his lectures 
at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in a tumult, 
and at every close their hands returned to him the proud 
feelings he adored. This gifted but self-educated man, once 
listening to the children of genius whom he had created about 
him, exclaimed, " Go it, go it, my boys ! they did so at 
Athens." This self-formed genius could throw up his native 
mud into the very heaven of his invention ! 

But even such pages as those of Barry's are the aliment 
of young genius. Before we can discern the beautiful, must 
we not be endowed with the susceptibility of love ? Must 
not the disposition be formed before even the object appears ? 
I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start 
over the reveries of the uneducated Barry, but pause and 
meditate, and inquire over the mature elegance of Reynolds ; 
in the one he caught the passion for beauty, and in the other 
he discovered the beautiful ; with the one he was warm and 
restless, and with the other calm and satisfied. 

Of the difficulties overcome in the self-education of genius, 
we have a remarkable instance in the character of Moses 
Mendelssohn, on whom literary Germany has bestowed the 
honourable title of "the Jewish Socrates."* So great appa- 
rently were the invincible obstructions which barred out 
Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philo- 
sophy, that, in the history of men of genius, it is something 
like taking in the history of man the savage of Aveyron from 
his woods — who, destitute of a human language, should at 
length create a model of eloquence ; who, without the faculty 
of conceiving a figure, should at length be capable of adding 
to the demonstrations of Euclid ; and who, without a com- 
plex idea and with few sensations, should at length, in the 
sublimest strain of metaphysics, open to the world a new 
view of the immortality of the soul ! 

Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in 

* I composed the life of Mendelssohn so far back as in 1798, in a 
periodical publication, whence our late biographers have drawn their no- 
tices ; a juvenile production, which happened to excite the attention of the 
late Barry, then not personally known to me ; and he gave all the im- 
mortality his poetical pencil could bestow on this man of genius, by im- 
mediately placing in his Elysium of Genius Mendelssohn shaking hands 
with Addison, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, and near 
Locke, the English master of Mendelssohn's mind. 



62 Literary Character. 

Germany, received an education completely rabbinical, and 
its mature must be comprehended, or the term of education 
would be misunderstood. The Israelites in Poland and 
Germany live with all the restrictions of their ceremonial law 
in an insulated state, and are not always instructed in the 
language of the country of their birth. They employ for 
their common intercourse a barbarous or patois Hebrew ; 
while the sole studies of the young rabbins are strictly con- 
fined to the Talmud, of which the fundamental principle, like 
the Sonna of the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species 
of profane learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls 
in the understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out 
what the imitative Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, 
then, these numerous folios of the Talmud which the true 
Hebraic student contemplates through all the seasons of life, 
as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine their surrounding 
mountains to be the confines of the universe. 

Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first 
studies ; but even in his boyhood this conflict of study occa- 
sioned an agitation of his spirits, which affected his life ever 
after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he caught a 
nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides ; and his native 
sagacity was already clearing up the surrounding darkness. 
An enemy not less hostile to the enlargement of mind than 
voluminous legends, presented itself in the indigence of his 
father, who was compelled to send away the youth on foot 
to Berlin, to find labour and bread. 

At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to an- 
other poor rabbin, who could only still initiate him into the 
theology, the jurisprudence, and the scholastic philosophy of 
his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther advanced in that 
philosophy of the mind in which he was one day to be the 
rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowledge of literature 
which was finally to place him among the first polished 
critics of Germany. 

Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first great 
impulse to the mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this 
from the companion of his misery and his studies, a man of 
congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish Jew, ex- 
pelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calum- 
niated student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than 
fortitude. But this vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a 
naturalist, and a mathematician. Mendelssohn, at a distant 



Mendelssohn. 63 

day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown together 
into the same situation, they approached each other by the 
same sympathies, and communicating in the only language 
which Mendelssohn could speak, the Polander voluntarily un- 
dertook his literary education. 

Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles in 
the history of modern literature. Two houseless Hebrew 
youths might be discovered, in the moonlit streets of Berlin, 
sitting in retired corners, or on the steps of some porch, the 
one instructing the other, with a Euclid in his hand ; but 
what is more extraordinary, it was a Hebrew version, com- 
posed by the master for a pupil who knew no other language. 
"Who could then have imagined that the future Plato of 
Germany was sitting on those steps ! 

The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on his 
heart, died — yet he had not lived in vain, since the electric 
spark that lighted up the soul of Mendelssohn had fallen 
from his own. 

Mendelssohn was now left alone ; his mind teeming with 
its chaos, and still master of no other language than that 
barren idiom which was incapable of expressing the ideas he 
was meditating on. He had scarcely made a step into the 
philosophy of his age, and the genius of Mendelssohn had 
probably been lost to Germany, had not the singularity of 
his studies and the cast of his mind been detected by the 
sagacity of Dr. Kisch. The aid of this physician was mo- 
mentous ; for he devoted several hours every day to the 
instruction of a poor } T outh, whose strong capacity he had 
the discernment to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. 
Mendelssohn was soon enabled to read Locke in a Latin 
version ; but with such extreme pain, that, compelled to 
search for every word, and to arrange their Latin order, and 
at the same time to combine metaphysical ideas, it was ob- 
served that he did not so much translate, as guess by the 
force of meditation. 

This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his progress, 
but invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running against 
the hill, at length courses with facility. 

A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, 
and chiefly the English, that he might read his favourite 
Locke in his own idiom. Thus a great genius for meta- 
physics and languages was forming itself alone, without aid. 

It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the 



64 Literary Character. 

effects of local and moral influences. There resulted from 
Mendelssohn's early situation certain defects in his Jewish 
education, and numerous impediments in his studies. Inhe- 
riting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the 
purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his 
new acquisitions, and in his delight of knowing many lan- 
guages, he with difficulty escaped from remaining a mere 
philologist ; while in his philosophy, having adopted the pre- 
vailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was 
long without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself 
from their rusty chains. It was more than a step which had 
brought him into their circle, but a step was yet wanting to 
escape from it. 

At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary 
intercourse : he became a great and original thinker in many 
beautiful speculations in moral and critical philosophy ; 
while he had gradually been creating a style which the critics 
of Germany have declared to be their first luminous model of 
precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first per- 
plexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in 
his middle age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his 
mature life wrestling with that commercial station whence 
he derived his humble independence, became one of the 
master-writers in the literature of his country. The history 
of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of 
the self-education of genius. 

Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life 
are valuable in our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth 
of genius. The multitude of authors and artists originates 
in the ignorant admiration of their early friends ; while the 
real genius has often been disconcerted and thrown into de- 
spair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The pro- 
ductions of taste are more unfortunate than those which 
depend on a chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts ; these 
are more palpable to the common judgments of men ; but 
taste is of such rarity, that a long life may be passed by 
some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a 
mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and 
so practised by converse with the literary world, that its 
prophetic feeling can anticipate the public opinion. When 
a young writer's first essay is shown, some, through mere 
inability of censure, see nothing but beauties ; others, from 
mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure 



Criticism of Friends. 65 

malice, see nothing but faults. " I was soon disgusted," 
says Gibbon, " with the modest practice of reading the ma- 
nuscript to my friends. Of such friends some will praise for 
politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had several 
of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their 
friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compo- 
sitions. The friends of Thomson discovered nothing but 
faults in his early productions, one of which happened to be 
his noblest, the "Winter;" they just could discern that these 
abounded with luxuriances, without being aware that they 
were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new 
school in art — and appealed from his circle to the public. 
From a manuscript letter of our poet's, written when em- 
ployed on his " Summer," I transcribe his sentiments on his 
former literary friends in Scotland — he is writing to Mallet : 
" Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to the 
lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for 
Mitchell, Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. 
Wherever I have evidence, or think I have evidence, which 
is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as all the mules in 
Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably the 
perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to 
share alike a poetic Hell — probably a sort of Dunciad, or 
lampoons. One of these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive 
epigram on Mitchell, whom he describes with a " blasted 
eye ;" but this critic literally having one, the poet, to avoid 
a personal reflection, could only consent to make the blemish 
more active — 

"Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell ! why 
Appears one beauty to thy blasting eye ? 

He again calls him "the planet-blasted Mitchell." Cf 
another of these critical friends he speaks with more sedate- 
ness, but with a strong conviction that the critic, a very 
sensible man, had no sympathy with the poet. " Aikman's 
reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not in 
them regard the turn of my genius enough ; should I alter 
my way, I would write poorly. I must choose what appears 
to me the most significant epithet, or I cannot with any 
heart proceed." The " Mirror,"* when periodically published 

* This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of the 
rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of 
the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The publication 
was commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790. — En. 



66 Literary Character. 

in Edinburgh, was "fastidiously" received, as all "home- 
productions" are: but London avenged the cause of the 
author. When Swift introduced Parnell to Lord Boling- 
broke, and to the world, he observes, in his Journal, " it is 
pleasant to see one who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, 
make his way here with a little friendly forwarding." Mon- 
taigne has honestly told us that in his own province they 
considered that for him. to attempt to become an author was 
perfectly ludicrous : at home, says he, " I am compelled to 
purchase printers ; while at a distance, printers purchase me." 
There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the friends 
of a young man of genius than the invention of a new 
manner : without a standard to appeal to, without bladders 
to swim, the ordinary critic sinks into irretrievable distress ; 
but usually pronounces against novelty. When Reynolds 
returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence of his art, 
and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it, 
and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that 
he did not paint so well as when he left England; while 
another, who conceived no higher excellence than Kneller, 
treated with signal contempt, the future Raphael of England. 
If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to 
the opinions of his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing 
them with inattention. He wants a Quintilian. One mode to 
obtain such an invaluable critic is the cultivation of his own 
judgment in a round of reading and meditation. Let him at 
once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor : let the 
great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics 
their expounders ; from the one he will draw inspiration, and 
from the others he will supply those tardy discoveries in 
art which he who solely depends on his own experience may 
obtain too late. Those who do not read criticism will rarely 
merit to be criticised ; their progress is like those who travel 
without a map of the country. The more extensive an 
author's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will 
be his powers in knowing what to do. To obtain originality, 
and effect discovery, sometimes requires but a single step, if 
we only know from what point to set forwards. This impor- 
tant event in the life of genius has too often depended on 
chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their 
graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent. 
Curran's predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagi- 
nation when excited by passion f but when young he gave no 



Juvenile Works. 67 

evidence of tins peculiar faculty, nor for several years, while 
a candidate for public distinction, was he aware of his par- 
ticular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself. 
It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his 
confidence, his ambition, and his industry were excited. 

Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever 
these may be ; they are the spontaneous growth, and like the 
plants of the Alps, not always found in other soils ; they are 
his virgin fancies. By contemplating them, he may detect 
some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner 
more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had 
rudely designed, and often may steal from himself some in- 
ventive touches, which, thrown into his most finished com- 
positions, may seem a happiness rather than an art. It was 
in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished 
productions, that more than one artist discovered with West 
that " there were inventive touches of art in his first and 
juvenile essay, which, with all his subsequent knowledge and 
experience, he had not been able to surpass." A young 
writer, in the progress of his studies, should often recollect 
a fanciful simile of Dryden — 

As those who unripe veins in mines explore 
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay, 

Till time digests the yet imperfect ore ; 
And know it 'will be gold another day. 

The youth of genius is that " age of admiration" as sings 
the poet of " Human Life," when the spell breathed into our 
ear by our genius, fortunate or unfortunate, is — "Aspire!" 
Then we adore art and the artists. It was Richakd son's 
enthusiasm which gave Reynolds the raptures he caught in 
meditating on the description of a great painter ; and Rey- 
nolds thought Raphael -the most extraordinary man the 
world had ever produced. West, when a youth, exclaimed 
that " A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!" 
This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity 
painful and insupportable to their young minds. 

But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the 
spring of the youthful year. There is a season of self-contest, 
a period of tremors, and doubts, and darkness. These fre- 
quent returns of melancholy, sometimes of despondence, which 
is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history of the 
heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a 
conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet 

e2 



68 Literary Character. 

often resorted when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, 
to confess his faults, and to confide to him his dark and 
wavering resolves. It was a question with Petrarch, whether 
he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary fame, by 
giving another direction to his life. 

" I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague- 
fits of faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he 
received me with his accustomed kindness. ' What ails 
you ? ' said he, ' you seem oppressed with thought : if I am 
not deceived, something has happened to you.' ' You do not 
deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and 
yet nothing newly has happened to me ; but I come to confide 
to you that my old melancholy torments me more than usual. 
You know its nature, for my heart has always been opened 
to you ; you know all which I have done to draw myself out 
of the crowd, and to acquire a name ; and surely not without 
some success, since I have your testimony in my favour. 
Are you not the truest man, and the best of critics, who have 
never ceased to bestow on me your praise — and what need I 
more ? Have you not often told me that I am answerable to 
God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected 
to cultivate them ? Your praises were to me as a sharp spur : 
I applied myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even 
of my moments. Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a 
new road ; and I flattered myself that assiduous labour would 
lead to something great ; but I know not how, when I thought 
myself highest, I feel myself fallen ; the spring of my mind 
has dried up ; what seemed easy once, now appears to me 
above my strength ; I stumble at every step, and am ready 
to sink for ever into despair. I return to you to teach me, 
or at least advise me. Shall I for ever quit my studies ? 
Shall I strike into some new course of life ? My father, have 
pity on me ! draw me out of the frightful state in which I 
am lost.' I could proceed no farther without shedding tears. 
' Cease to afflict yourself, my son,' said that good man ; ' your 
condition is not so bad as you think : the truth is, you knew 
little at the time you imagined you knew much. The dis- 
covery of your ignorance is the first great step you have 
made towards true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you 
now view those deep shades of the soul which were concealed 
from you by excessive presumption. In ascending an elevated 
spot, we gradually discover many things whose existence be- 
fore was not suspected by us. Persevere in the career which 



Irritability of Genius. 69 

you entered with my advice ; feel confident that God will not 
abandon you : there are maladies which the patient does not 
perceive ; but to be aware of the disease, is the first step 
towards the cure.'" 

This remarkable literary interview is here given, that it 
may perchance meet the eye of some kindred youth at one of 
those lonely moments when a Shakspeare may have thought 
himself no poet, and a Raphael believed himself no painter. 
Then may the tender wisdom of a John of Florence, in the 
cloudy despondency of art, lighten up the vision of its glory ! 

Ingenuous Youth ! if, in a constant perusal of the master- 
wTiters, you see your own sentiments anticipated — if, in the 
tumult of your mind, as it comes in contact with theirs, new 
sentiments arise — if, sometimes, looking on the public favou- 
rite of the hour, you feel that within which prompts you to 
imagine that you could rival or surpass him — if, in meditating 
on the confessions of every man of genius, for they all have 
their confessions, you find you have experienced the same 
sensations from the same circumstances, encountered the same 
difficulties and overcome them by the same means ; then let 
not your courage be lost in your admiration, but listen to 
that "still small voice" in your heart which cries with 
Coeeeggio and with Montesquieu, " Ed io anche son 
pittore!" 



CHAPTER VII. 

Of the irritability of genius. — (renins in society often in a state of suffer- 
ing. — Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters. — Of the 
occupation of making a great name. — Anxieties of the most successful. — 
Of the inventors. — Writers of learning. — Writers of taste. — Artists. 

The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by 
eccentricity and enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with 
the monotonous and imitative habits of society, as society is 
carried on in a great metropolis, where men are necessarily 
alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape them- 
selves to one another. 

The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the 
man of genius are at discord with the artificial habits of life : 
in the vortexes of business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of 
human beings are only treading in one another's steps. The 
pleasures and the sorrows of this active multitude are not his, 



70 Literary Character. 

while his are not obvious to them ; and his favourite occupa- 
tions strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his sensibility. 
G-enius in society is often in a state of suffering. Professional 
characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to 
their predominant interests, conform to that assumed ur- 
banity which levels them with ordinary minds ; but the man 
of genius cannot leave himself behind in the cabinet he quits ; 
the train of his thoughts is not stopped at will, and in the 
range of conversation the habits of his mind will prevail : the 
poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse ; the artist 
is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes ; 
the philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new 
combination of thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, 
is thrown back into the Middle Ages. Thus it happens that 
an excited imagination, a high-toned feeling, a wandering re- 
verie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually carrying the 
man of genius out of the processional line of the mere conver- 
sationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, 
and prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance 
hit. His generalising views take things only in masses, 
while in his rapid emotions he interrogates, and doubts, and 
is caustic ; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is at his 
studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent listener, we 
are mortified by detecting the absent man : now he appears 
humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which 
probably may be only known to himself; and now haughty 
and hardy for a triumph he has obtained, which yet remains 
a secret to the world. No man is so apt to indulge the ex- 
tremes of the most opposite feelings : he is sometimes inso- 
lent, and sometimes querulous ; now the soul of tenderness 
and tranquillity, — then stung by jealousy, or writhing in 
aversion ! A fever shakes his spirit ; a fever which has some- 
times generated a disease, and has even produced a slight per- 
turbation of the faculties.* In one of those manuscript notes 

* I have given a history of literary quarrels from personal motives, in 
"Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many controversies, 
in which the public get involved, have sprung from some sudden squabbles, 
some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or some casual ob- 
servation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged 
the genus irritabile ; a title which from ancient days has been assigned to 
every description of authors. The late Dr. Wells, who had some expe- 
rience in his intercourse with many literary characters, observed, that "in 
whatever regards the fruits of their mental labours, this is universally ac- 
knowledged to be true. Some of the malevolent passions indeed fre- 



Burns' Diary. 71 

by Lord Byeost on this work, which I have wished to preserve, 
I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that 
" the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful 
than the applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the 
confession of genius, and such its liability to hourly pain. 

Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the 
most curious sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, 
the delicacy of soul, even to its shadowiness, from the warm 
shozzos of Busks, when he began a diary of the heart, — a 
narrative of characters and events, and a chronology of his 
emotions. It was natural for such a creature of sensation 
and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impos- 
sible for him to get through it. The paper-book that he con- 
ceived would have recorded all these things turns out, 
therefore, but a very imperfect document. Imperfect as it 
was, it has been thought proper not to give it entire. Yet 
there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped 
into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could 
no longer " pour out his bosom, his every thought and float- 
ing fancy, his very inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to 
another, without hazard of losing part of that respect which 
man deserves from man ; or, from the unavoidable imperfec- 
tions attending .human nature, of one day repenting his 
confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edin- 
burgh, and it was as a substitute for such a human being that 
he bought a paper-book to keep under lock and key : " a 
security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of any friend 
whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments 
of this " paper-book ;" — it will instruct as much as any open 
confession of a criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. 
No man was more afflicted with that miserable pride, the 
infirmity of men of imagination, which is so jealously alive, 
even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual acknow- 
ledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude 
and veneration for "the noble Grlencairn," was " wounded to 
the soul" because his lordship showed "so much attention, 
engrossing attention, to the only blockhead at table ; the 
whole company consisted of his lordship, Dunderpate, and 

quently become in learned men more than ordinarily strong, from want of 
that restraint upon their excitement which society imposes." A puerile 
critic has reproached me for having drawn my description entirely from my 
own fancy : — I have taken it from life ! See further symptoms of this 
disease at the close of the chapter on Self-praise in the present work. 



72 Literary Character. 

myself." This Dunderpate, who dined witn Lord Glencairn, 
might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of 
more value than an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended 
with another patron, who was also a literary brother, Dr. 
Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be neglecting the 
irritable poet " for the mere carcass of greatness, or when his 
eye measured the difference of their point of elevation ; I 
say to myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have 
added, except a good deal of painful contempt,) " what do I 
care for him or his pomp either?" — "Dr. Blair's vanity is 
proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds Burns, at 
the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius 
had entirely escaped his self-observation. 

This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of 
Marivatjx, that though a good man, there was something 
dark and suspicious in his character, which made it difficult to 
keep on terms with him ; the most innocent word would 
wound him, and he was always inclined to think that there 
was an intention to mortify him ; this disposition made him 
unhappy, and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure. 

What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is 
the wayward irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which 
is often weak to effeminacy, and capricious to childishness ! 
while minds of a less delicate texture are not frayed and 
fretted by casual frictions ; and plain sense with a coarser 
grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of their 
feelings. How mortifying is the list of — 

Fears of the brave and follies of the wise ! 

Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to 
some personal defect — on the obscurity of their birth — on 
some peculiarity of habit ; and have suffered themselves to be 
governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras, equally 
fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the 
temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered 
where it is not always suspected. Cumberland declared that 
the sensibility of some men of genius is so quick and captious, 
that you must first consider whom they can be happy with, 
before you can promise yourself any happiness with them : if 
you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, 
all the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to 
the proper grouping of the guests. Look round on our con- 
temporaries ; every day furnishes facts which confirm our 



Sensitiveness of Genius. 73 

principle. Among the vexations of Pope was the libel of 
"the pictured shape ;"* and even the robust mind of John- 
son could not suffer to be exhibited as " blinking Sam."f 
Milton must have delighted in contemplating his own per- 
son ; and the engraver not having reached our sublime bard's 
ideal grace, he has pointed his indignation in four iambics. 
The praise of a skipping ape raised the feeling of envy in that 
child of nature and genius, Goldsmith. Voittjre, the son 
of a vintner, like our Prior, was so mortified whenever 
reminded of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, 
that wine, which cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the 
heart of Voiture, Akenside ever considered his lameness as 
an unsupportable misfortune, for it continually reminded him 
of the fall of the cleaver from one of his father's blocks. 
Beccaria, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived melancholy 
and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment 
this great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy : a 
young female had extinguished all his philosophy. The poet 
Eotjsseatj was the son of a cobbler ; and when his honest 
parent waited at the door of the theatre to embrace his son 
on the success of his first piece, genius, whose sensibility is 
not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with insult 
and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to 
crime. 

Those who give so many sensations to others must them- 
selves possess an excess and a variety of feelings. We find, 
indeed, that they are censured for their extreme irritability ; 
and that happy equality of temper so prevalent among men 
of letters, and which is conveniently acquired by men of 
the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, 
or to fervid dispositions — authors and artists. The man of 
wit becomes petulant, the profound thinker morose, and the 
vivacious ridiculously thoughtless. 

When Eotjsseatj once retired to a village, he had to learn 
to endure its conversation ; for this purpose he was compelled 
to invent an expedient to get rid of his uneasy sensations. 
" Alone, I have never known ennui, even when perfectly 

* He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece to a 
satire noted in " Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition). — Ed. 

T Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of him which 
dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects should 
never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a caricature 
particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of the Poets," in 
which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars." — En. 



74* Literary Character. 

unoccupied : my imagination, filling the void, was sufficient 
to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, 
when every one is seated face to face, and only moving their 
tongues, which I never could support. There to be a fixture, 
nailed with one hand on the other, to settle the state of the 
weather, or watch the flies about one, or, what is worse, to 
be bandying compliments, this to me is not bearable." He 
hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his 
working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the 
country gossips. 

Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and 
precarious than that of making a great fortune ? the progress 
of a man's capital is unequivocal to him, but that of the fame 
of authors and artists is for the greater part of their lives of 
an ambiguous nature. They become whatever the minds or 
knowledge of others make them ; they are the creatures of 
the prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must 
suffer from those precipitate judgments which are the result 
of such prejudices and such predispositions. Time only is the 
certain friend of literary worth, for time makes the world 
disagree among themselves ; and when those who condemn 
discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party 
loses itself in the stronger, and at length they learn that the 
author was far more reasonable than their prejudices had 
allowed them to conceive. It is thus, however, that the regard 
which men of genius find in one place they lose in another. 
We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the 
fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold 
indifference, if not contempt, he encounters in another place ; 
here the man of learning is condemned as a heavy drone, and 
there the man of wit annoys the unwitty listener. 

And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men 
of genius renewed at every work — often quitted in despair, 
often returned to with rapture ? the same agitation of the 
spirits, the same poignant delight, the same weariness, the 
same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment after 
excellence ? Is the man of genius an inventor ? the dis- 
covery is contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years 
after, perhaps not during his whole life ; even men of science 
are as children before him. Sir Thomas Bodley wrote to 
Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his new mode of phi- 
losophising . It seems the fate of all originality of thinking 
to be immediately opposed ; a contemporary is not prepared for 



Contemporary Criticism. 75 

its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, from the 
prudential motive which turns away from a new and solitary 
path. Bacon was not at all understood at home in his own 
day ; his reputation — for it was not celebrity — was confined 
to his history of Henry VII., and his Essays ; it was long 
after his death before English writers ventured to quote 
Bacon as an authority ; and with equal simplicity and gran- 
deur, Bacon called himself "the servant of posterity." 
Montesquieu gave his Esprit des Loix to be read by that 
man in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and 
in return received the most mortifying remarks. The great 
philosopher exclaimed in despair, " I see my own age is not 
ripe enough to understand my work ; however, it shall be 
published !" When Kepler published the first rational work 
on comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild 
dream. Copernicus so much dreaded the prejudice of man- 
kind against his treatise on " The devolutions of the Heavenly 
Bodies," that, by a species of continence of all others most 
difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained it in 
his closet for thirty years together. LiNNJ3US once in despair 
abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of 
the ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Sie- 
gesbeck had involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, 
and labour Linnjeus could endure, but that his botany should 
become the object of ridicule for all Stockholm, shook the 
nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him speak 
for himself. " No one cared how many sleepless nights and 
toilsome hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, 
that Siegesbeck had annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, 
who bestows on me nothing but Siegesbecks : and condemned 
my too numerous observations a thousand times over to 
eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much 
time, to spend my days in a study which yields no better 
fruit, and makes me the laughing stock of the world." Such 
are the cries of the irritability of genius, and such are often 
the causes. The world was in danger of losing a new science, 
had not Linn^ius returned to the discoveries which he had 
forsaken in the madness of the mind ! The great Sydenham, 
who, like our Harvey and our Hunter, effected a revolution 
in the science of medicine, and led on alone by the .inde- 
pendence of his genius, attacked the most prevailing preju- 
dices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his rivals, 
that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern 



76 Literary Character. 

practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of 
medical heresy." John Hunter was a great discoverer in his 
own science ; but one who well knew him has told us, that few 
of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his 
pursuits ; and his strong and solitary genius laboured to per- 
fect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without one 
cheering approbation. " We bees do not provide honey for 
ourselves," exclaimed Van Helmont, when worn out by the 
toils of chemistry, and still contemplating, amidst tribulation 
and persecution, and approaching death, his " Tree of Life," 
which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But with 
a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out ; " My mind 
breathes some unheard-of thing within ; though I, as unpro- 
fitable for this life, shall be buried!" Such were the mighty 
but indistinct anticipations of this visionary inventor, the 
father of modern chemistry ! 

I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors 
in science, without advertingto another causeof that irritability 
of genius which is so closely connected with their pursuits. 
If we look into the history of theories, we shall be surprised 
at the vast number which have " not left a rack behind." 
And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not 
at times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and 
stability ? They felt, too often for their repose, that the noble 
architecture which they had raised might be built on move- 
able sands, and be found only in the dust of libraries ; a 
cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an inventor 
of his theory all at once ; and as one of them said, " after 
dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me 
dark, incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should 
find this man of genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause 
of this nervous state cannot, nay, must not, be confided to 
the world : the honour of his darling theory will always be 
dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight doubts 
which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have 
but recently discovered, that Rousseau was disturbed by a 
terror he experienced, and which we well know was not un- 
founded, that his theories of education were false and absurd. 
He could not endure to read a page in his own " Emile " # with- 
out disgust after the work had been published ! He acknow- 
ledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than 

* In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently first pub- 
lished in the Literary Gazette, Nov. 17, 1821. 



Labour of Genius. 77 

for them. " I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on 
the style and eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are 
good for nothing at the bottom, and that all my theories are 
full of extravagance." \Je crains toujours quejepeclie par le 
fond, et que tons ones systemes ne sont que des extravagances .] 
Hartley with his "Vibrations and Vibratiuncles," Leibnitz 
with his "Monads," Cudwobth with his " Plastic Natures," 
Malebeanche with his paradoxical doctrine of " Seeing all 
things in God," and Bubset with his heretical " Theory of 
the Earth," must unquestionably at times have betrayed an 
irritability which those about them may have attributed to 
temper, rather than to genius. 

Is our man of genius — not the victim of fancy, but the 
slave of truth — a learned author ? Of the living waters of 
human knowledge it cannot be said that " If a man drink 
thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes remain 
to open ! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate ! 
There is no term in researches which new facts may not alter, 
and a single date may not dissolve. Truth ! thou fascinating, 
but severe mistress, thy adorers are often broken down in thy 
servitude, performing a thousand unregarded task-works ! 
Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single 
thread, often unravelling — now feeling their way in darkness, 
doubtful if it be thyself they are touching. How much of 
the real labour of genius and erudition must remain con- 
cealed from the world, and never be reached by their penetra- 
tion ! Montesquieu has described this feeling after its 
agony : " I thought I should have killed myself these three 
months to finish a onorceau (for his great work), which I 
wished to insert, on the origin and revolutions of the civil 
laws in France. You will read it in three hours ; but I do 
assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has 
whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the 
genius of Gibbon, exclaims, " In this, as in many other 
places, the masterly boldness and precision of his outline, 
which astonish those who have trodden parts of the same 
field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my 
learned friend, Shaeon Tubneb, recomposed, with renewed 
researches, the history of our ancestors, of which Milton and 
Hume had despaired — thrice, amidst the self-contests of ill- 
health and professional duties ! 

The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still 
exposed to the fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the 



78 Literary Character. 

accidental knowledge of some inferior mind, and always to the 
reigning taste, whatever it chance to be, of the public. Bur- 
net criticised Varillas unsparingly ;* but when he wrote 
history himself, Harmer's " Specimen of Errors in Burnet's 
History," returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted 
on another. Newton's favourite work was his "Chronology," 
which he had written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from 
its publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of which 
he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no 
character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper 
of our great philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard 
to criticism, that Whiston declares that he would not pub- 
lish his attack on the " Chronology," lest it might have 
killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop Stillingfleet's 
end was hastened by Locke's confutation of his metaphysics. 
The feelings of Sir John Marsham could hardly be less 
irritable when he found his great work tainted by an accusa- 
tion that it was not friendly to revelation.f When the 
learned Pocock published a specimen of his translation of 
Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited 
great interest ; but in 1663, when he gave the world the 
complete version, it met with no encouragement : in the 
course of those thirteen years, the genius of the times had 
changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request. 

The great Verulam profoundly felt the retardment of his 
fame ; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment in his 
testament, where he bequeaths his name to posterity, after 
some generations shall ee past. Bruce sunk into his 
grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity 
perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and 
which he authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. 
Mortified and indignant at the reception of his great labour 
by the cold-hearted scepticism of little minds, and the malicious- 
ness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude had toiled through 
a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the laugh and 
scorn of public opinion ; for Brtjce there was a simoon more 
dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot 

* For an account of this work, and Burnet's expose of it, see " Curio- 
sities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132. — Ed. 

f This great work the Canon Chronicus, was published in 1672, and 
was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and intelli- 
gible, and to reconcile the whole to the Sci'ipture chronology ; a labour 
he had commenced in Diatriba Chronologica, published in 1649. — Ed. 



Reputation Difficult of Acquiry. 79 

hide its head. Yet Bruce only met with the fate which 
Marco Polo had before encountered ; whose faithful narra- 
tive had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who was 
long thrown aside among legendary writers.* 

Haryey, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth 
year, hardly lived to see his great discovery of the circulation 
of the blood established : no physician adopted it ; and when 
at length it was received, one party attempted to rob Harvey 
of the honour of the discovery, while another asserted that it 
was so obvious, that they could only express their astonish- 
ment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity 
and envy are the evil spirits which have often dogged great 
inventors to their tomb, and there only have vanished. — But 
I seem writing the " calamities of authors," and have only 
begun the catalogue. 

The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more diffi- 
culties than any other. Similar was the fate of the finest 
ode- writers in our poetry. On their publication, the odes of 
Collins could find no readers ; and those of Gray, though 
ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of 
"Walpole, were condemned as failures. When Racine pro- 
duced his " Athalie," it was not at all relished : Boileau indeed 
declared that he understood these matters better than the 
public, and prophesied that the public would return to it : 
the}'' did so ; but it was sixty years afterwards ; and Racine 
died without suspecting that " Athalie " was his masterpiece. 
I have heard one of our great poets regret that he had devoted 
so much of his life to the cultivation of his art, which arose 
from a project made in the golden vision of his youth : " at a 
time," said he, " when I thought that the fountain could 
never be dried up." — " Your baggage will reach posterity," 
was observed. — " There is much to spare," was the answer. 

Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those 

* His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he described 
as consisting of millions obtained for him the nickname of Marco Milione 
among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who were unable to 
comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of Eastern travel. 
Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to retract his state- 
ments, which he indignantly refused. It was long after ere his truthful- 
ness was established by other travellers ; the Venetian populace gave his 
house the name La Corte cli Milioni : and a vulgar caricature of the great 
traveller was always introduced in their carnivals, who was termed Marco 
Milione; and delighted them with the most absurd stories, in which 
everything was computed by millions. — Ed. 



80 Literary Character. 

parts which have all the raciness of the soil, and as such are 
most liked by its admirers, are those which are the most 
criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves under that 
general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to 
differ ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, 
if we were to say, that but few of mankind are prepared to 
relish the beautiful with that enlarged taste which compre- 
hends all the forms of feeling which genius may assume ; 
forms which may be necessarily associated with defects. A 
man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and 
the magic of his style consists in the movements of his soul ; 
but the art of conveying those movements is far separated from 
the feeling which inspires them. The idea in the mind is not 
always found under the pen, any more than the artist's con- 
ception can always breathe in his pencil. Like Fiamingo's 
image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, 
" What perfection would you have ?" — " Alas !" exclaimed the 
sculptor, " the original I am labouring to come up to is in my 
head, but not yet in my hand." 

The w,riter toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our 
minds that sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of 
his pages, and become himself. Aetosto wrote sixteen 
different ways the celebrated stanza descriptive of a tempest, 
as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara ; and the version he pre- 
ferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that Peteaech 
made forty-four alterations of a single verse : " whether for 
the thought, tbe expression, or the harmony, it is evident 
that as many operations in the heart, the head, or the ear of 
the poet occurred," observes a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo. 
Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an author 
for his compositions : alteration is not always improvement. 
A picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the 
artist cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo ! yet 
still he is lingering, still strengthening the weak, still sub- 
duing the daring, still searching for that single idea which 
awakens so many in the minds of others, while often, as it 
once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the 
horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for 
twenty years delighted himself with forming in his mind the 
nymph his hand was always creating. How rapturously he 
beheld her ! what inspiration ! what illusion ! Alas ! the last 
five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached, 
and could not stop and finish ! 



Slowness of Qreat Works. 81 

The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, 
that a man of genius, late in life, may discover how its secret 
conceals itself in the habit ; how discipline consists in exercise, 
how perfection comes from experience, and how unity is the 
last effort of judgment. When Fox meditated on a history 
which should last with the language, he met his evil genius 
in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his elocu- 
tion were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and 
previous study ; he saw that he could not class with the great 
historians of every great people ; he complained, while he 
mourned over the fragment of genius which, after such zealous 
preparation, he dared not complete. Cubbaist, an orator of 
vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in 
life he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unac- 
customed to its more gradual march, found a pen cold, and 
destitute of every grace. Rousseau has glowingly described 
the ceaseless inquietude by which he obtained the seductive 
eloquence of his style ; and has said, that with whatever 
talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily ob- 
tained. The existing manuscripts of Rousseau display as 
many erasures as those of Ariosto or Petrarch ; they show his 
eagerness to dash down his first thoughts, and the art by 
which he raised them to the impassioned style of his imagina- 
tion. The memoir of Gibbon was composed seven or nine 
times, and, after all, was left unfinished ; and Bueeon tells us 
that he wrote his " Epoques de la Nature " eighteen times 
before it satisfied his taste. Bubns's anxiety in finishing his 
poems was great; "all my poetry," said he, "is the effect of 
easy composition, but of laborious correction." 

Pope, when employed on the Iliad, found it not only 
occupy his thoughts by day, but haunting his dreams by 
night, and once wished himself hanged, to get rid of Homer : 
and that he experienced often such literary agonies, witness 
his description of the depressions and elevations of genius : 

Who pants for glory, finds but short repose ; 
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows ! 

"When Romnet undertook to commence the first subject 
for the Shakspeare Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm 
amidst the sublime and pathetic labouring in his whole mind 
arose the terror of failure. The subject chosen was " The 
Tempest ;" and, as Hay ley truly observes, it created many a 
tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement 

a 



82 Literary Character. 

desire of that perfection which genius conceives, and cannot 
always execute, held a perpetual contest with that dejection 
of spirits which degrades the unhappy sufferer, and casts him, 
grovelling among the mean of his class. In a national work, 
a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for its per- 
formance ; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in 
the uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By 
that work he will always be judged, for public failures are 
never forgotten, and it is not then a party, but the public 
itself, who become his adversaries. With Komkey it was 
" a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire 
him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous 
picture, which exercised his imagination and his pencil for 
several years. I have heard that he built a painting-room 
purposely for this picture ; and never did an anchorite pour 
fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than B-omney when 
this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its 
solitary feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent 
even to write a letter ; yet on this occasion, relieved from his 
intense anxiety under so long a work, he wrote one of the 
most eloquent. It is a document in the history of genius, 
and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly 
described.* I once heard an amiable author, whose literary 
career has perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, 
half in anger and in love, declare that he would retire to some 
solitude, where, if any one would follow him, he would found 
a new order — the order of the disappointed. 

Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours as 
unremitting and exhausting as those of the artisan. The 
world is not always aware, that to some, meditation, composi- 
tion, and even conversation, may inflict pains undetected by 
the eye and the tenderness of friendship. Whenever Rousseau 
passed a morning in society, it was observed, that in the 
evening he was dissatisfied and distressed ; and Jo hist Huntee, 
in a mixed company, found that conversation fatigued, instead 
of amusing him. Hawkeswoeth, in the second paper of the 

* " My dear Friend, — Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at the 
birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction. 

"There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part of 
the last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I 
thought I should absolutely have sunk into despair. ! what a kind 
friend is in those times ! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, 
I can say thus much, I am a greater philosopher and a better Chris- 
tian." 



Anxiety of Authors. 83 

" Adventurer," has drawn, from his own feelings, an eloquent 
comparative estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour; it 
may console the humble mechanic ; and Plato, in his work on 
" Laws," seems to have been aware of this analogy, for he con- 
secrates all working men or artisans to Vulcan and Minerva, 
because both those deities alike are hard labourers! Yet with 
genius all does not terminate, even with the most skilful 
labour. What the toiling Vulcan and the thoughtful 
Minerva may want, will too often be absent — the presence 
of the G-races. In the allegorical picture of the School of 
Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the students are led through 
their various studies, in the opening clouds above the academy 
are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an in- 
scription they must often recollect — Senza di noi ognifatica 
e vana. 

The anxious uncertainty of an author for his compositions 
resembles the anxiety of a lover when he has written to a 
mistress who has not yet decided on his claims ; he repents 
his labour, for he thinks he has written too much, while he 
is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some things 
which he imagines would have secured the object of his 
wishes. Madame De Stael, who has often entered into 
feelings familiar to a literary and political family, in a pa- 
rallel between ambition and genius, has distinguished them 
in this ; that while " ambition perseveres in the desire of 
acquiring power, genius flags of itself. Genius in the midst 
of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to 
be treated as a real disease, if the records of glory did not 
soften the sufferings it produces." — "Athenians! what 
troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed Demosthenes, 
" that I may be talked of by you !" 

These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours 
of genius. Racine had extreme sensibility; the pain in- 
flicted by a severe criticism outweighed all the aj)plause he 
received. He seems to have felt, what he was often re- 
proached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were 
all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our 
Dennis with Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces 
as they appeared.* Corneille's objections he would attribute 
to jealousy — at his pieces when burlesqued at the Italian 

* See the article " On the Influence of a bad temper in Criticism" in 
" Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his career. — Ed. 

g2 



84 Literary Character. 

theatre* lie would smile outwardly, though sick at heart ; 
but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his 
witty friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its 
bitterness, sunk more deeply into his heart than the bur- 
lesques at the Italian theatre, the protest of Corneille, and 
the iteration of the two Dennises. More than once Molieke 
and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their 
dramatic career ; it was Boileatj who ceaselessly animated 
their languor: "Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the in- 
justice of our age !" x\nd Coistgkreve's comedies met with such 
moderate success, that it appears the author was extremely 
mortified, and on the ill reception of The Way of the World, 
determined to write no more for the .stage. When he told 
Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must con- 
sider him as a private gentleman, and not as an author, 
— which apparent affectation called down on Congreve the 
sarcastic severity of the French author,f — more of mortifica- 
tion and humility might have been in Congreve' s language 
than of affectation or pride. 

The fife of Tasso abounds with pictures of a complete ex- 
haustion of this kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed 
him with the most intricate literary discussions, and either 
occasioned or increased a mental alienation. In one of his 
letters, we find that he repents the composition of his great 
poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous, 
which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses 
that his cold reasoning critics have decided that the history 
of his hero, Godfrey, required another species of conduct. 
" Hence," cries the unhappy bard, " doubts torment me ; 
but for the past, and what is done, I know of no remedy ;" 
and he longs to precipitate the publication, that " he may be 
delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears — 
" Did not the circumstances of my situation compel me, I 
would not print it, even perhaps during my life, I so much 
doubt of its success." Such was the painful state of fear and 
doubt experienced by the author of the "Jerusalem Delivered," 
when he gave it to the world ; a state of suspense, among 
the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to 

* See the article on " The Sensibility of Eacine" in " Litei-ary Miscel- 
lanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in "Curiosities 
of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459. — Ed. 

f Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to visit him 
if he had been merely a private gentleman.— Ed. 



Intellectual Labour, 85 

participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now in- 
spect the severe correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile 
of a page of his manuscripts in Mr. Dibdin's late " Tour." 
She seems to have inflicted tortures on his pen, surpassing 
even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which, 
thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.* At Florence 
may still be viewed the many works begun and abandoned 
by the genius of Michael Angelo ; they are preserved in- 
violate — "so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's genius!" 
exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be consi- 
dered as failures of the chisel ; they appear rather to have 
been rejected for coming short of the artist's first conceptions : 
yet, in a strain of sublime poetry, he has preserved his senti- 
ments on the force of intellectual labour ; he thought that 
there was nothing which the imagination conceived, that 
could not be made visible in marble, if the hand were made 
to obey the mind: — 

Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto, 
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoscriva 
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva 

La man che obbedisce all' intelletto. 



The sculptor never yet conceived a thought 
That yielding marble has refused to aid ; 

But never with a mastery he wrought — 
Save when the hand the intellect obeyed. 

An interesting domestic story has been preserved of Ges- 
NEE, who so zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to 
the arts. His sensibility was ever struggling after that ideal 
excellence which he could not attain. Often he sunk into 
fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the tenderness of 
his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered feelings ; 
it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after 
a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, 
some accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of 
these hypochondria of genius, after a long interval of despair, 
one morning at breakfast with his wife, his eye fixed on one 
of his pictures : it was a group of fauns with young shepherds 
dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with vines ; his 
eye appeared at length to glisten ; and a sudden return to 

* It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition of the 
11 Curiosities of Literature." — Ed. 



86 Literary Character. 

good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe — " Ah ! see 
those playful children, they always dance!" This was the 
moment of gaiety and inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken 
easel. 

La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has 
been shown that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans* 
— there are also some sorrows peculiar to them, and which the 
world can neither pity nor soften, because they do not enter 
into their experience. The querulous language of so many 
men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very 
different from the real ones — the most fortunate live to 
see their talents contested and their best works decried. 
Assuredly many an author has sunk into his grave without 
the consciousness of having obtained that fame for which he 
had sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling Smollett has 
left this testimony to posterity : — " Had some of those, who 
are pleased to call themselves my friends, been at any pains 
to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I 
had to expect in the capacity of an author, I should, in all 
probability, have spared myself the incredible labour and 
chagrin I have since undergone." And Smollett was a 
popular writer ! Pope's solemn declaration in the preface to 
his collected works comes by no means short of Smollett's 
avowal. Hume's philosophical indifference could often 
suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully 
indulged. 

But were the feelings of Hume more obtuse, or did his 
temper, gentle as it was by constitution, bear, with a saintly 
patience, the mortifications his literary life so long endured ? 
After recomposing two of his works, which incurred the same 
neglect in their altered form, he raised the most sanguine 
hopes of his History, but he tells us, " miserable was my dis- 
appointment !" Although he never deigned to reply to his 
opponents, yet they haunted him ; and an eye-witness has 
thus described the irritated author discovering in conversa- 
sion his suppressed resentment — " His forcible mode of ex- 
pression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes, and the 
gestures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of contempt, 

* See Eamazini, "De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr. James 
translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this curious trea- 
tise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their respective workmen ; 
so that the means by which they live are too often the occasion of their 
being hurried out of the world. 



Irritability of Genius. 87 

or of aversion ! Hogarth, in a fit of the spleen, advertised 
that he had determined not to give the world any more 
original works, and intended to pass the rest of his days in 
painting portraits. The same advertisement is marked by 
farther irritability. He contemptuously offers the purchasers 
of his "Analysis of Beauty," to present them gratis with 
" an eighteenpenny pamphlet," published by Ramsay the 
painter, written in opposition to Hogarth's principles. So un- 
tameable was the irritability of this great inventor in art, 
that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to 
dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his 
nights.* 

Parties confederate against a man of genius, — as happened 
to Corneille, to D'Avenant,f and Milton ; and a Pradon and 
a Settle carry away the meed of a Racine and a Dryden. It 
was to support the drooping spirit of his friend Racine on the 
opposition raised against Phaedra, that Boileau addressed to 
him an epistle " On the Utility to be drawn from the 
Jealousy of the Envious." The calm dignity of the historian 
De Thou, amidst the passions of his times, confidently 
expected that justice from posterity which his own age 
refused to his early and his late labour. That great man 
was, however, compelled by his injured feelings, to compose a 
poem under the name of another, to serve as his apology 
against the intolerant court of Rome, and the factious poli- 
ticians of France ; it was a noble subterfuge to which a great 
genius was forced. The acquaintances of the poet Collins 
probably complained of his wayward humours and irritability; 
but how could they sympathise with the secret mortification 
of the poet, who imagined that he had composed his Pastorals 
on wrong principles, or when, in the agony of his soul, he 
consigned to the flames with his own hands his unsold, but 
immortal odes ? Can we forget the dignified complaint of 

* Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was severely 
attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which was 
branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and himself 
vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory was stolen from. 
Lomazzo. — Ed. 

t See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of several 
wits against D'Avenant, a great genius ; where I discovered that a volume 
of poems, said "to be written by the author's friends," which had 
hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing hut 
irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many transcribers 
of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians. 



88 Literary Character. 

the Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appealing 
to posterity ? 

Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so loudly 
accused in its solitary occupations — that loftiness of spirit, 
those quick jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions 
which view everything as it passes in its own ideal world, 
and rarely as it exists in the mediocrity of reality. If this 
irritability of genius be a malady which has raged even among 
philosophers, we must not be surprised at the temperament 
of -poets. These last have abandoned their country ; they 
have changed their name; they have punished themselves 
with exile in the rage of their disorder. No ! not poets only. 
Descartes sought in vain, even in his secreted life, for a 
refuge for his genius ; he thought himself persecuted in 
France, he thought himself calumniated among strangers, 
and he went and died in Sweden ; and little did that man of 
genius think that his countrymen would beg to have his 
ashes restored to them. Even the reasoning Hume once 
proposed to change his name and his country ; and I believe 
did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly 
alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes 
immortal in the language of a people whom he would con- 
temn.* Does he accept with ingratitude the fame he loves 
more than life ? 

Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of 
genius participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, 
fine writers, or artists. It is a state not friendly to equality 
of temper. In the various humours incidental to it, when 
they are often deeply affected, the cause escapes all perception 
of sympathy. The intellectual malady eludes even the ten- 

* I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord Byron on this passage ; 
not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the genius of 
Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his " father land ;" an 
expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some years 
past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord Byron 
and of Mr. Southey. 

His lordship has here observed, "It is not my fault that I am obliged to 
write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, I 
would write in it ; but this will require ten years at least to form a 
style : no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master tho- 
roughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note : 
' ' What was rumoured of me in that language ? If true, I was unfit for 
England : if false, England was unfit for me :— 'There is a world else- 
where.' I have never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I 
ever returned to it at all. " 



Genius and Society. 89 

derness of friendship. At those moments, the lightest injury 
to the feelings, which at another time would make no im- 
pression, may produce a perturbed state of feeling in the 
warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of a self- wounded 
spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements 
of a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual 
excellence of the man of genius ; not the general intercourse 
of societ}^ ; not the insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of 
the volatile. 

Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are 
known by their writings — intellectual beings in the romance 
of life ; in its history, they are men ! Erasmus compared 
them to the great figures in tapestry-work, which lose their 
effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and their 
infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable 
of discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are 
the consolation of the dunces. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The spirit of literature and the spirit of society. — The Inventors. — Society 
offers seduction and not reward to men of genius. — The notions of per- 
sons of fashion of men of genius.— The habitudes of the man of genius 
distinct from those of the man of society. — Study, meditation, and en- 
thusiasm, the progress of genius. — The disagreement between the men 
of the world and the literary character. 

The inventohs, who inherited little or nothing from their 
predecessors, appear to have pursued their insulated studies in 
the full independence of their mind and development of their 
inventive faculty ; they stood apart, in seclusion, the solitary 
lights of their age. Such were the founders of our literature 
— Bacon and Hobbes, Newton and Milton. Even so late as 
the days of Dryden, Addison, and Pope, the man of genius 
drew his circle round his intimates ; his day was uniform, his 
habits unbroken ; and he was never too far removed, nor too 
long estranged from meditation and reverie : his works were 
the sources of his pleasure ere they became the labours of his 
pride. 

But when a more uniform light of knowledge illuminates 
from all sides, the genius of society, made up of so many sorts 
of genius, becomes greater than the genius of the individual 
who has entirely yielded himself up to his solitary art. Hence 



90 Literary Character. 

the character of a man of genius becomes subordinate. A 
conversation age succeeds a studious one ; and the family of 
genius, the poet, the painter, and the student, are no longer 
recluses. They mix with their rivals, who are jealous of 
equality, or with others who, incapable of valuing them for 
themselves alone, rate them but as parts of an integral. 

The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and 
mechanical forms of life ; and in too close an intercourse with 
society, the loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified 
away in its seductive conventions. An excessive indulgence 
in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests 
of a luxuriant and opulent age ; but of late, while the arts of 
assembling in large societies have been practised, varied by 
jail forms, and pushed on to all excesses, it may become a 
question whether by them our happiness is as much improved, 
or our individual character as well formed as in a society not 
so heterogeneous and unsocial as that crowd termed, with the 
sort of modesty peculiar to our times, " a small party :" the 
simplicity of parade, the humility of pride engendered by the 
egotism which multiplies itself in proportion to the numbers 
it assembles. 

It may, too, be a question whether the literary man and 
the artist are not immolating their genius to society when, 
in the shadowiness of assumed talents — that counterfeiting of 
all shapes — they lose their real form, with the mockery of 
Proteus. But nets of roses catch their feet, and a path, 
where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an 
Epictetus from his hut. The art of multiplying the enjoy- 
ments of society is discovered in the morning lounge, the 
evening dinner, and the midnight coterie. In frivolous 
fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the unvalued 
hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, 
and too rare to catch its inspirations. Hence so many of our 
contemporaries, whose card-racks are crowded, have produced 
only flashy fragments. Efforts, but not works — they seem 
to be effects without causes ; and as a great author, who is not 
one of them, once observed to me, " They waste a barrel of 
gunpowder in squibs." 

And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashion- 
able society offers the man of true genius. He will be sought 
for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from his certain 
fate — that of becoming tiresome to his pretended admirers. 

At first the idol — shortly he is changed into a victim. He 



Genius and Society. 91 

forms, indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited 
as a sort of improvisatore ; but the esteem they concede to 
him is only a part of the system of politeness ; and should he 
be dull in discovering the favourite quality of their self-love, 
or in participating in their volatile tastes, he will find fre- 
quent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the court 
of Cyprus, that " what he knows is not proper for this place, 
and what is proper for this place he knows not." This 
society takes little personal interest in the literary character. 
Horace Walpole lets us into this secret when writing to 
another man of fashion, on such a man of genius as Gray — 
" I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about 
Gray ; he is the worst company in the world. From a 
melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too 
much dignity, he never converses easily ; all his words are 
measured and chosen, and formed into sentences : his writings 
are admirable — he himself is not agreeable." This volatile 
being in himself personified the quintessence of that society 
which is called " the world," and could not endure that 
equality of intellect which genius exacts. He rejected Chat- 
terton, and quarrelled with every literary man and every 
artist whom he first invited to familiarity — and then hated. 
Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, of Gray, of Cole, 
and others. Such a mind was incapable of appreciating the 
literary glory on which the mighty mind of Burke was 
meditating. Walpole knew Burke at a critical moment of 
his life, and he has recorded his own feelings : — " There was 
a young Mr. Burke who wrote a book, in the style of Lord 
Bolingbroke, that was much admired. He is a sensible man, 
but has not worn off his authorism yet, and thinks there is 
nothing so charming as writers, and to be one : he ivill know 
letter one of these days.'''' Gray and Burke ! What mighty 
men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer — that indiffe- 
rence of selfism for great sympathies — of this volatile and 
heartless man of literature and rank ! 



That thing of silk, 



Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk ! 

The confidential confession of Raclne to his son is remark- 
able : — " Do not think that I am sought after by the great 
for my dramas ; Corneille composes nobler verses than mine, 
but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of 
the actors. I never allude to my works when with men of 



92 Literary Character. 

the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. 
My talent with them consists, not in making them feel that 
I have any, but in showing them that they have." Racine 
treated the great like the children of society ; Corneille 
would not compromise for the tribute he exacted, but he 
consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the 
audience usually rose to salute him. The great comic genius 
of Prance, who indeed was a very thoughtful and serious man, 
addressed a poem to the painter Mignaed, expressing his 
conviction that "the court," by which a Frenchman of tbe 
court of Louis XIV. meant the society we call " fashionable," 
is fatal to the perfection of art — 

Qui se donne a la cour se derobe a son art ; 

Tin esprit partage rarement se consomme, 

Et les emplois de feu demandent tout l'homme. 

Has not the fate in society of our reigning literary favou- 
rites been uniform ? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the 
year: they are pushed aside to put in their place another, 
who, in his turn, must descend. Such is the history of the 
literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of 
appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a 
certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically 
styled themselves " the world," that more dignified celebrity 
which makes an author's name more familiar than his person. 
To one who appeared astonished at the extensive celebrity 
of Bueeon, the modern Pliny replied, "I have passed fifty 
years at my desk." Haydn would not yield up to society 
more than those hours which were not devoted to study. 
These were indeed but few : and such were the uniformity 
and retireclness of his life, that " He was for a long time the 
only musical man in Europe who was ignorant of the cele- 
brity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most sub- 
lime of the race, sung, 

che seggendo in piama, 

In Fama non si vien, ne sotto coitre ; 

Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma 

Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia 

Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma. 

For not on downy plumes, nor under shade 
Of canopy reposing, Fame is won: 
Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days, 
Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth 
As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave.* 



Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv. 



Genius and Society. 93 

But men of genius, in their intercourse with persons of 
fashion, have a secret inducement to court that circle. They 
feel a perpetual want of having the reality of their talents 
confirmed to themselves, and they often step into society to 
observe in what degree they are objects of attention ; for, 
though ever accused of vanity, the greater part of men of 
genius feel that their existence, as such, must depend on the 
opinion of others. This standard is in truth always pro- 
blematical and variable ; yet they cannot hope to find a more 
certain one among their rivals, who at all times are adroitly 
depreciating their brothers, and " dusking" their lustre. 
They discover among those cultivators of literature and the 
arts who have recourse to them for their pleasure, impassioned 
admirers, rather than unmerciful judges — judges who have 
only time to acquire that degree of illumination which is just 
sufficient to set at ease the fears of these claimants of genius. 

When literary men assemble together, what mimetic friend- 
ships, in their mutual corruption ! Creatures of intrigue, 
they borrow other men's eyes, and act by feelings often even 
contrary to their own : they wear a mask on their face, and 
only sing a tune they have caught. Some hierophant in 
their mysteries proclaims their elect whom they have to 
initiate, and their profane who are to stand apart under their 
ban. They bend to the spirit of the age, but they do not 
elevate the public to them ; they care not for truth, but only 
study to produce effect, and they do nothing for fame but 
what obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not there- 
fore the more real, for everything connected with fashion 
becomes obsolete. Her ear has a great susceptibility of 
weariness, and her eye rolls for incessant novelty. Never 
was she earnest for anything. Men's minds with her become 
tarnished and old-fashioned as furniture. But the steams of 
rich dinners, the eye which sparkles with the wines of France, 
the luxurious night which flames with more heat and bril- 
liancy than God has made the day, this is the world the man 
of coterie-celebrity has chosen ; and the Epicurean, as long as 
his senses do not cease to act, laughs at the few who retire 
to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is — a 
nothing ! Such men live like unbelievers in a future state, 
and their narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in their artificial 
world : but true genius looks at a nobler source of its exist- 
ence ; . it catches inspiration in its insulated studies ; and to 
the great genius, who feels how his present is necessarily con- 



94 Literary Character. 

nected with, his future celebrity, posthumous fame is a reality, 
for the sense acts upon him ! 

The habitudes of genius, before genius loses its freshness in 
this society, are the mould in which the character is cast ; and 
these, in spite of all the disguise of the man, will make him a 
distinct being from the man of society. Those who have 
assumed the literary character often for purposes very distinct 
from literary ones, imagine that their circle is the public • 
but in this factitious public all their interests, their opinions' 
and even their passions, are temporary, and the admirers 
with the admired pass away with their season. " It is not 
sufficient that we speak the same language," says a wittv 
philosopher, " but we must learn their dialect ; we must 
think as they think, and we must echo their opinions, as we 
act by imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to 
level himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required 
in such circles of society, lest he become one of themselves • 
he will soon find that to think like them will in time become 
to act like them. But he who in solitude adopts no transient 
feelings, and reflects no artificial lights, who is only himself 
possesses an immense advantage : he has not attached impor- 
tance to what is merely local and fugitive, but listens to 
interior truths, and fixes on the immutable nature of things. 
He is the man of every age. Malebranche has observed, that 
" It is not indeed thought to be charitable to disturb com- 
mon opinions, because it is not truth which unites societj' as 
it exists so much as opinion and custom :" a principle which 
the world would not, I think, disagree with ; but which 
tends to render folly wisdom itself, and to make error im- 
mortal. 

Eidicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of 
genius. Eidicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like 
the shadowy monsters opposing iEneas, are impalpable to his 
strokes : but remember when the sibyl bade the hero proceed 
without noticing them, he found these airy nothings as harm- 
less as they were unreal. The habits of the literary cha- 
racter will, however, be tried by the men and women of the 
world by their own standard : they have no other ; the salt 
of ridicule gives a poignancy to their deficient comprehension, 
and their perfect ignorance, of the persons or things which 
are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The 
habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to 
persons of the world. Voltaire, and his companion, the 



Voltaire and De Chatelet. 95 

scientific Madame De Chatelet, she who introduced New- 
ton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to literary 
pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. It happened 
once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a 
fashionable circle in the chateau of a French nobleman. A 
Madame de Stael, the -persifleur in office of Madame Du 
Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair. They 
arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was 
some trouble to put them to supper and bed. They are 
called apparitions, because they were never visible by day, 
onlv at ten at night ; for the one is busied in describing great 
deeds, and the other in commenting on Newton. Like other 
apparitions, they are uneasy companions : they will neither 
play nor walk ; they will not dissipate their mornings with 
the charming circle about them, nor allow the charming 
circle to break into their studies. Yoltaire and Madame de 
Chatelet would have suffered the same pain in being forced 
to an abstinence of their regular studies, as this circle of 
" agreables" would have at the loss of their meals and their 
airings. However, the persifleur declares they were ciphers 
" en societe," adding no value to the number, and to which 
their learned writings bear no reference. 

But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, 
Yoltaire poured out a vehement declamation against a fashion- 
able species of gambling, which appears to have made them 
all stare. But Madame de Chatelet is the more frequent 
victim of our persifleur. The learned lady would change her 
apartment — for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without 
fire — which last was her emblem. " She is reviewing her 
Principia ; an exercise she repeats every year, without which 
precaution they might escape from her, and get so far away 
that she might never find them again. I believe that her 
head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment rather 
than the place of their birth ; so that she is right to watch 
them closely ; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation 
to our amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night- 
time. She has six or seven tables in her apartments, for she 
wants them of all sizes ; immense ones to spread out her 
papers, solid ones to hold her instruments, lighter ones, &c. 
Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident 
which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in 
writing, when a bottle of ink fell over the despatches ; but 
the lady did not imitate the moderation of the prince ; indeed, 



96 Literary Character. 

she had not written on State affairs, and what was spoilt in 
her room was algebra, much more difficult to copy out." 
Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great mathe- 
matician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable 
circle in which they resided — the representation is just, for it 
is by one of the coterie itself. 

Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, — this is the progress of 
genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till 
he can only live among polished crowds ; who, if he bear about 
him the consciousness of genius, will still be acting under 
their influences. And perhaps there never was one of this 
class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself 
in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking 
out to seek for himself. Wilkes, no longer touched by the 
fervours of literary and patriotic glory, suffered life to melt 
away as a domestic voluptuary ; and then it was that he ob- 
served with some surprise of the great Earl of Chatham, 
that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth, 
to his great pursuit of eloquence. That ardent character 
studied Barrow's Sermons so often as to repeat them from 
memory, and could even read twice from beginning to end 
Bailey's Dictionary ; these are little facts which belong only 
to great minds ! The earl himself acknowledged an artifice 
he practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, 
" when he was young, he always came late into company, and 
left it early." Vittoeio Aleieri, and a brother-spirit, our 
own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst the brilliant circle in 
which they were born. The workings of their imagination 
were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness 
of feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned 
triflers of their rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of 
their character, in constantly escaping from the processional 
spectacle of society.* It is no trivial observation of another 
noble writer, Lord Shaetesbtjry, that " it may happen that 
a person may be so much the worse author, for being the finer 
gentleman." 

* In a note which Lord Byron has written in a copy of this work his 
lordship says, " I fear this was not the case ; I have been but too much in 
that circle, especially in 1812-13-14." 

To the expression of "one deep loneliness of feeling," his lordship has 
marked in the margin " True." I am gratified to confirm the theory of 
my ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience of the greatest 
of our age. 



A Literary Monarch. 97 

An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between 
the man of the world and the literary character, we find in a 
philosopher seated on a throne. The celebrated Julian 
stained the imperial purple with an author's ink ; and when 
he resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character 
shocked that volatile and luxurious race. He slighted the 
plaudits of their theatre, he abhorred their dances and their 
horse-races, he was abstinent even at a festival, and incorrupt 
himself, perpetually admonished the dissipated citizens of 
their impious abandonment of the laws of their country. 
The Antiochians libelled their emperor, and petulantly lam- 
pooned his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore 
neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a 
sharper punishment, pointed at them his satire of " the Miso- 
pogon, or the Antiochian ; the Enemy of the Beard," where, 
amidst irony and invective, the literary monarch bestows on 
himself many exquisite and characteristic touches. All that 
the persons of fashion alleged against the literary character, 
Julian unreservedly confesses — his undressed beard and awk- 
wardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient 
tastes, while at the same time he represents his good qualities 
as so many extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry 
of self-reprehension, the imperial philosopher has not failed to 
show this fight and corrupt people that the reason he could 
not possibly resemble them, existed in the unhappy cir- 
cumstance of having been subject to too strict an education 
under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve 
from the one right way, and who (additional misfortune !) 
had inspired him with such a silly reverence for Plato and 
Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that he had been in- 
duced to make them his models. " Whatever manners," says 
the emperor, " I may have previously contracted, whether 
gentle or boorish, it is impossible for me now to alter or un- 
learn. Habit is said to be a second nature ; to oppose it is 
irksome, but to counteract the study of more than thirty years 
is extremely difficult, especially when, it has been imbibed 
with so much attention." 

And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could 
do this violence to their nature, should we not lose the 
original for a factitious genius, and spoil one race without 
improving the other ? If nature and habit, that second nature 
which prevails even over the first, have created two beings 
distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever assimi- 

H 



98 Literary Character. 

late them ? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult 
causes, however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded 
moment. Clip the wings of an eagle that he may roost 
among domestic fowls, — at some unforeseen moment his 
pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for 
"the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and 
the cloud. 

The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled 
paces. Too impatient amidst the heartless courtesies of 
society, and little practised in the minuter attentions, he has 
rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing graces of Lord Chester- 
field. Plato ingeniously compares Socrates to the gallipots 
of the Athenian apothecaries ; the grotesque figures of owls 
and apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained 
within precious balsams. The man of genius amidst many a 
circle may exclaim with Themistocles, " I cannot fiddle, 
but I can make a little village a great city ;" and with 
Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own deficien- 
cies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional man- 
ners, asserting that "wanting all these things, he was not 
the less Corneille." 

But with the great thinkers and students, their character 
is still more obdurate. Adam Smith could never free him- 
self from the embarrassed manners of a recluse ; he was often 
absent, and his grave and formal conversation made him seem 
distant and reserved, when in fact no man had warmer feel- 
ings for his intimates. One who knew Sir Isaac Newton 
tells us, that " he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful, 
and look all the while as if he were saying his prayers." A 
French princess, desirous of seeing the great moralist 
Nicolle, experienced an inconceivable disappointment when 
the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow- 
imaginable, silently sank into his chair. The interview pro- 
moted no conversation, and the retired student, whose 
elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom, shrunk with 
timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing with a 
princess and having nothing to say. Observe Hume thrown 
into a most ridiculous attitude by a woman of talents and 
coterie celebrity. Our philosopher was called on to perform 
his part in one of those inventions of the hour to which the 
fashionable, like children in society, have sometimes resorted 
to attract their world by the rumour of some new extrava- 
gance. In the present, poor Hume was to represent a sultan 



1 Students unfitted for Society. 99 

on a sofa, sitting between two slaves, who were the prettiest 
and most vivacious of Parisians. Much was anticipated from 
this literary exhibition. The two slaves were ready at re- 
partee, but the utter simplicity of the sultan displayed a 
blockishness which blunted all edge. The phlegmatic meta- 
physician and historian only gave a sign of life by repeating 
the same awkward gesture, and the same ridiculous exclama- 
tion, without end. One of the fair slaves soon discovered the 
unchangeable nature of the forlorn philosopher, impatiently 
exclaiming, " I guessed as much, never was there such a calf 
of a man !" — " Since this affair," adds Madame d'Epinay, 
"Hume is at present banished to the class of spectators." 
The philosopher, indeed, had formed a more correct concep- 
tion of his own character than the volatile sylphs of the 
Parisian circle, for in writing to the Countess de Boufflers, on 
an invitation to Paris, he said, " I have rusted on amid books 
and study ; have been little engaged in the active, and not 
much in the pleasurable, scenes of life ; and am more accus- 
tomed to a select society than to general companies." If 
Hume made a ridiculous figure in these circles, the error did 
not lie on the side of that cheerful and profound philoso- 
pher. — This subject leads our inquiries to the nature of the 
conversations of men of genius. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Conversations of men of genius. — Their deficient agreeableness may result 
from qualities which conduce to their greatness. — Slow-minded men not 
the dullest. — The conversationists not the ablest writers. — Their true 
excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits. 

In conversation the sublime Dante was taciturn or satirical ; 
B utlee, sullen or caustic \ Gray and Aleieri seldom talked 
or smiled ; Descartes, whose habits had formed him for soli- 
tude and meditation, was silent ; Rousseau was remarkably 
trite in conversation, not an idea, not a word of fancy or elo- 
quence warmed him ; Addison and Moliere in society were 
only observers ; and Dryden has very honestly told us, "My 
conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and 
reserved ; in short, I am none of those who endeavour to 
break jests in company, or make repartees." Pope had lived 

H 2 



100 Literary Character. 

among "the great," not only in rank but in intellect, the 
most delightful conversationists ; but the poet felt that he 
could not contribute to these seductive pleasures, and at 
last confessed that he could amuse and instruct himself 
much more by another means : " As much company as I have 
kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better, and 
would rather be employed in reading, than in the most agree- 
able conversation." Pope's conversation, as preserved by 
Spence, was sensible ; and it would seem that he had never 
said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has 
been recorded. It was ingeniously said of Vaucanson, that 
he was as much an automaton as any which he made. 
Hogarth and Swift, who looked on the circles of society 
with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company ; but their 
grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the 
greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of 
manners in his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its 
own operations, and it would cease to be itself were it always 
to act like others. 

Men of genius who are habitually eloquent, who have prac- 
tised conversation as an art, for^ some even sacrifice their 
higher pursuits to this perishable art of acting, have indeed 
excelled, and in the most opposite manner. Horne Tooke 
finely discriminates the wit in conversation of Sheridan and 
Curran, after having passed an evening in their company. 
" Sheridan's wit was like steel highly polished and sharpened 
for display and use ; Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, in- 
cessantly crumbling away from its own richness." Charles 
Butler, whose reminiscences of his illustrious contemporaries 
are derived from personal intercourse, has correctly described 
the familiar conversations of Pitt, Pox, and Burke : " The 
most intimate friends of Mr. Fox complained of his too fre- 
quent ruminating silence. Mr. Pitt talked, and his talk was 
fascinating. Mr. Burke's conversation was rambling, but 
splendid and instructive beyond comparison." Let me add, 
that the finest genius of our times, is also the most delightful 
man; he is that rarest among the rare of human beings, 
whom to have known is nearly to adore ; whom to have seen, 
to have heard, forms an era in our life ; whom youth remem- 
bers with enthusiasm, and whose presence the men and 
women of "the world" feel like a dream from which they 
would not awaken. His bonhomie attaches our hearts to him 



Conversational Poiver. 101 

by its simplicity ; his legendary conversation makes us, for a 
moment, poets like himself.* 

But that deficient agreeableness in social life with which 
men of genius have been often reproached, may really result 
from the nature of those qualities which conduce to the 
greatness of their public character. A thinker whose mind 
is saturated with knowledge on a particular subject, will be 
apt to deliver himself authoritatively ; but he will then pass 
for a dogmatist : should he hesitate, that he may correct an 
equivocal expression, or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in 
danger of sinking into pedantry or rising into genius. Even 
the fulness of knowledge has its tediousness. " It is rare," 
said Malebranche, "that those who meditate profoundly can 
explain well the objects they have meditated on ; for they hesi- 
tate when they have to speak ; they are scrupulous to convey 
false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do not choose to 
speak, like others, merely for the sake of talking." A vivid 
and sudden perception of truth, or a severe scrutiny after it, 
may elevate the voice, and burst with an irruptive heat on the 
subdued tone of conversation. These men are too much in 
earnest for the weak or the vain. Such seriousness kills their 
feeble animal spirits. Smeaton, a creative genius of his class, 
had a warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many: it 
arose from an intense application of mind, which impelled him 
to break out hastily when anything was said that did not 
accord with his ideas. Persons who are obstinate till they 
can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are trouble- 
some intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is 
only the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while 
obscurity as frequently may arise from the deficiency of pre- 
vious knowledge in the listener. It was said that Newton 
in conversation did not seem to understand his own writings, 
and it was supposed that his memory had decayed. The fact, 
however, was not so ; and Pemberton makes a curious dis- 
tinction, which accounts for Newton not always oeing ready 
to speak on subjects of which he was the sole master. " In- 
ventors seem to treasure up in their own minds what they 
have found out, after another manner than those do the 

* This was written under the inspiration of a night's conversation, or 
rather listening to Sir Walter Scott. — I cannot bring myself to erase 
what now, alas ! has closed in the silence of a swift termination of his 
glorious existence. 



102 Literary Character. 

same things that have not this inventive faculty. The 
former, when they have occasion to produce their know- 
ledge, in some means are obliged immediately to investigate 
part of what they want. For this they are not equally fit at 
all times ; and thus it has often happened, that such as 
retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, 
have appeared off-hand more expert than the discoverers 
themselves." 

A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men of 
genius, which has often injured them when the listeners were 
not intimately acquainted with the men, are those sports of 
a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to throw out paradoxi- 
cal opinions, and to take unexpected views of things in some 
humour of the moment. These fanciful and capricious ideas 
are the grotesque images of a playful mind, and are at least 
as frequently misrepresented as they are misunderstood. But 
thus the cunning Philistines are enabled to triumph over the 
strong and gifted man, because in the hour of confidence, and 
in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in the 
lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn 
of his strength. Dr. Johnson appears often to have indulged 
this amusement, both in good and ill humour. Even such a 
calm philosopher as Adam Smith, as well as such a child of 
imagination as Buejsts, were remarked for this ordinary habit 
of men of genius ; which, perhaps, as often originates in a 
gentle feeling of contempt for their auditors, as from any 
other cause. Many years after having written the above, I 
discovered two recent confessions which confirm the principle. 
A literary character, the late Dr. Leyden, acknowledged, 
that " in conversation I often Yerge so nearly on absurdity, 
that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as 
to misrepresent me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing 
her father's conversation, observes that, " his openness went 
too far, almost to imprudence ; exposing him not only to be 
misrepresented, but to be misunderstood. Those who did not 
know him intimately, often took literally what was either said 
in sport, or spoken with the intention of making a strong 
impression for some good purpose." Cumberland, whose 
conversation was delightful, happily describes the species I 
have noticed. " Nonsense talked by men of wit and under- 
standing in the hour of relaxation is of the very finest 
essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who 
have the sense to comprehend it ; but it implies a trust in the 



Simplicity of Genius. 103 

company not always to be risked." The truth is, that many, 
eminent for their genius, have been remarkable in society for 
a simplicity and playfulness almost infantine. Such was the 
gaiety of Hume, such the bonhomie of Fox ; and one who had 
long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was 
disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic 
of genius. It is a solitary grace, which can never lend its 
charm to a man of the world, whose purity of mind has long 
been lost in a hacknied intercourse with everything exterior to 
himself. 

But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of opinion 
which a man of genius can no more divest himself of, than of 
the features of his face. But what if this intractable obsti- 
nacy be only resistance of character ? Burns never could 
account to himself why, " though when he had a mind he 
was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of 
commanding respect," and imagined it was owing to his de- 
ficiency in what Sterne calls " that understrapping virtue of 
discretion ;" "I am so apt to a lapsus lingwcB" says this 
honest sinner. Amidst the stupidity of a formal circle, and 
the inanity of triflers, however such men may conceal their 
impatience, one of them has forcibly described the reaction of 
this suppressed feeling : " The force with which it burst out 
when the pressure was taken off, gave the measure of the 
constraint which had been endured." Erasmus, that learned 
and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius which 
could enliven a folio, has well described himself, sum naturd 
propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat : — more constitu- 
tionally inclined to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, 
perhaps became him. We know in his intimacy with Sir 
Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating com- 
panion ; yet in his intercourse with the great he was not 
fortunate. At the first glance he saw through affectation 
and parade, his praise of folly was too ironical, and his free- 
dom carried with it no pleasantry for those who knew not to 
prize a laughing sage. 

In conversation the operations of the intellect with some 
are habitually slow, but there will be found no difference 
between the result of their perceptions and those of a quicker 
nature ; and hence it is that slow-minded men are not, as 
men of the world imagine, always the dullest. Nicolle said 
of a scintillant wit, " He vanquishes me in the drawing-room, 
but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs." Many a 



104 Literary Character. 

great wit has thought the wit it was too late to speak, and 
many a great reasoner has only reasoned when his opponent 
has disappeared. Conversation with such men is a losing 
game; and it is often lamentable to observe how men of 
genius are reduced to a state of helplessness from not com- 
manding their attention, while inferior intellects habitually 
are found to possess what is called " a ready mind." For 
this reason some, as it were in despair, have shut themselves 
up in silence. A lively Frenchman, in describing the distinct 
sorts of conversation of his literary friends, among whom was 
Dr. Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and 
thinker, wary, even in society, by noting down " the silence 
of the celebrated Franklin." We learn from Cumberland 
that Lord Mansfield did not promote that conversation which 
gave him any pains to carry on. He resorted to society for 
simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness 
when accompanied with placidity. " It was a kind of cushion 
to his understanding," observes the wit. Chaucer, like La 
Fontaine, was more facetious in his tales than in his conver- 
sation; for the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, 
observing that his silence was more agreeable to her than his 
talk. Tasso's conversation, which his friend Manso has 
attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company 
he sat absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air; and it was 
on one of these occasions that a person present observing that 
this conduct was indicative of madness, that Tasso, who had 
heard him, looking on him without emotion, asked whether he 
was ever acquainted with a madman who knew when to hold his 
tongue ! Malebranche tells us that one of these mere men of 
learning, who can only venture to praise antiquity, once said, 
" I have seen Descartes ; I knew him, and frequently have 
conversed with him ; he was a good sort of man, and was not 
wanting in sense, but he had nothing extraordinary in him." 
Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and had this 
man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably he would 
not have discovered, even in this idol of antiquity, anything 
extraordinary. Two thousand years would have been wanting 
for our learned critic's perceptions. 

It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely 
proved to be the abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible 
of excitement in the presence of his auditors, making the 
minds of men run with his own, seizing on the first impres- 
sions, and touching the shadows and outlines of things — with 



Contradictory Character. 105 

a memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual 
associations, and varying with all those extemporary changes 
and fugitive colours which melt away in the rainbow of con- 
versation ; with that wit, which is only wit in one place, and 
for a time ; with that vivacity of animal spirits which often 
exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers — 
this man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream 
of phrase which has sometimes been imagined to require only 
to be written down to be read with the same delight with 
which it was heard ; but he cannot print his tone, nor his air 
and manner, nor the contagion of his hardihood. All the 
while we were not sensible of the flutter of his ideas, the in- 
coherence of his transitions, his vague notions, his doubtful 
assertions, and his meagre knowledge. A pen is the extin- 
guisher of this luminary. 

A curious contrast occurred between Bttefon and his 
friend Montbelliarb, who was associated in his great work. 
The one possessed the reverse qualities of the other : Buffos, 
whose style in his composition is elaborate and declamatory, 
was in conversation coarse and careless. Pleading that con- 
versation with him was only a relaxation, he rather sought 
than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these 
seemed expressive and facetious ; while Montbelliarb threw 
every charm of animation over his delightful talk : but when 
he took his seat at the rival desk of Buffon, an immense 
interval separated them ; he whose tongue dropped the honey 
and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron ; while 
Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of 
nature. Cowley and Killegrew furnish another instance. 
Cowley was embarrassed in conversation, and had no quick- 
ness in argument or reply : a mind pensive and elegant could 
not be struck at to catch fire : while with Killegrew the 
sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.* When the 
delightful conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Den- 
ham, who knew them both, hit off the difference between them : 
Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ, 
Combined in one they had made a matchless wit. 

* Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an author rests, 
have not been republished with one exception — the Parson's Wedding — 
which is given in Dodsley's collection ; and which is sufficient to satisfy 
curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles, the Second, and had great 
influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but are 
too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was some- 
times useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his duties. — En. 



106 Literary Character. 

Not, "however, that a man of genius does not throw out 
many things in conversation which have only been found admir- 
able when the public possessed them. The public often widely 
differ from the individual, and a century's opinion may inter- 
vene between them. The fate of genius is sometimes that of 
the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal Minerva to 
a private party for inspection. Before the artist they 
trembled for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled ; 
behind him they calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. 
Once fixed in a public place, in the eyes of the whole city, 
the statue was the Divinity ! There is a certain distance at 
which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed. 

But enough of those defects of men of genius which often 
attend their conversations. Must we then bow to authorial 
dignity, and kiss hands, because they are inked ? Must we 
bend to the artist, who considers us as nothing unless we are 
canvas or marble under his hands ? Are there not men of 
genius the grace of society and the charm of their circle ? 
Fortunate men ! more blest than their brothers ; but for this, 
they are not the more men of genius, nor the others less. To 
how many of the ordinary intimates of a superior genius who 
complain of his defects might one say, " Do his productions 
not delight and sometimes surprise you ? — You are silent ! 
I beg your pardon ; the public has informed you of a great 
name ; you would not otherwise have perceived the precious 
talent of your neighbour : you know little of your friend but 
his name." The personal familiarity of ordinary minds with a 
man of genius has often produced a ludicrous prejudice. A 
Scotchman, to whom the name of a Dr. Robertson had tra- 
velled down, was curious to know who he was. — "Your neigh- 
bour!" — But he could not persuade himself that the man 
whom he conversed with was the great historian of his coun- 
try. Even a good man could not believe in the announce- 
ment of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice : " Can 
there anything good come out of Nazareth ?" 

Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have 
formed him, and he will then be the most interesting com- 
panion ; then will you see nothing but his character. Aken- 
side, in conversation with select friends, often touched by a 
romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review those eminent 
ancients whom he loved ; he imbued with his poetic faculty 
even the details of their lives ; and seemed another Plato 
while he poured libations to their memory in the language of 



Eloquence of Barry. 107 

Plato, among those whose studies and feelings were congenial 
with his own. Romney, with a fancy entirely his own, 
would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent 
and elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which 
by constitution he was prone ; thus Cumberland, from per- 
sonal intimacy, describes the conversation of ishis man of 
genius. Even the temperate sensibility of Hume was touched 
by the bursts of feeling of Rousseau ; who, he says, " in con- 
versation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like 
inspiration." Barry, that unhappy genius ! was the most 
repulsive of men in his exterior. The vehemence of his lan- 
guage, the wildness of his glance, his habit of introducing 
vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association of habit, 
served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even 
a horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt 
intolerable uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave 
this man of genius that very evening without an impression 
that she had never heard so divine a man in her life. The 
conversation happening to turn on that principle of benevo- 
lence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of 
the Founder, it gave Barry an opportunity of opening on 
the character of Jesus with that copiousness of heart and 
mind which, once heard, could never be forgotten. That 
artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of 
Christ, which he was always talking of executing : " It is 
here !" he would cry, striking his head. That which baffled 
the invention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his 
Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty among 
the apostles, this imaginative picture of the mysterious union 
of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when con- 
versing, to haunt the reveries of Barry. 

There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently 
instructive on that class of knowledge or that department of 
art which reveals the mastery of their life. Their conversa- 
tions of this nature affect the mind to a distant period of life. 
Who, having listened to such, has forgotten what a man of 
genius has said at such moments ? Who dwells not on the 
single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the hest 
of the moment, which came from its source r Then the mind 
of genius rises as the melody of the iEolian harp, when the 
winds suddenly sweep over the strings — it comes and goes — 
and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art. 

The Miscellanea of Politia^' are not only the result of his 



108 Literary Character. 

studies in the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of con- 
versations which had passed in those rides which Lorenzo, ac- 
companied by Politian, preferred to the pomp of cavalcades. 
When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with Petrarch 
about his valley in many a wandering discourse, the} r sometimes 
extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought 
them in vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them 
returning in the evening. When Helvetxtjs enjoyed the 
social conversation of a literary friend, he described it as " a 
chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations which 
Horke Tooke alluded to, when he said " I assure you, we 
iind more difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations." 
The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters 
and of artists must then be those which are associated with 
their pursuits, and these are of a different complexion with 
the talk of men of the world, the objects of which are drawn 
from the temporary passions of party-men, or the variable on 
dits of triflers — topics studiously rejected from these more tran- 
quillising conversations. Diamonds can only be polished by 
their own dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other 
diamonds ; and so it happens with literary men and artists. 

A meeting of this nature has been recorded by Cicero, 
which himself and Attictjs had with Varro in the country. 
Varro arriving from Rome in their neighbourhood somewhat 
fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. "As soon as 
we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, " we could not 
delay hastening to see one who was attached to us by the 
same pursuits and by former friendship." They set off, but 
found Varro half way, urged by the same eager desire to join 
them. They conducted him to Cicero's villa. Here, while 
Cicero was inquiring after the news of Rome, Atticus inter- 
rupted the political rival of Caesar, observing, " Let us leave 
off inquiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. 
Rather ask about what we know,, for Varro' s muses are longer 
silent than they used to be, yet surely he has not forsaken 
them, but rather conceals what he writes." — " By no means !" 
replied Varro, " for I deem him to be a whimsical man to 
write what he wishes to suppress. I have indeed a great 
work in hand (on the Latin language), long designed for 
Cicero." The conversation then took its natural turn by 
Atticus having got rid of the political anxiety of Cicero. 
Such, too, were the conversations which passed at the literary 
residence of the Medici family, which was described, with as 



Literary Conversation. 109 

much truth as fancy, as " the Lyceum of philosophy, the 
Arcadia of poets, and the Acadenry of painters." We have 
a pleasing instance of such a meeting of literary friends in 
those conversations which passed in Pope's garden, where 
there was often a remarkable union of nobility and literary 
men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover met 
Cobham, Bathurst, Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other lords ; 
there some of these poets found patrons, and Pope himself 
discovered critics. The contracted views of Spence have un- 
fortunately not preserved these literary conversations, but a 
curious passage has dropped from the pen of Lord Boeing- 
is roke, in what his lordship calls " a letter to Pope," often 
probably passed over among his political tracts. It breathes 
the spirit of those delightful conversations. " My thoughts," 
writes his lordship, " in what order soever they How, shall be 
communicated to you just as they pass through my mind — • 
just as they used to be when we conversed together on these 
or any other subject ; when we sauntered alone, or as we 
have often done with good Arbuthnot, and iihe jocose Dean 
of St. Patrick, among the multiplied scenes of your little 
garden. The theatre is large enough for my ambition." 
Such a scene opens a beautiful subject for a curious portrait- 
painter. These literary groups in the garden of Pope, 
' sauntering, or divided in confidential intercourse, would fur- 
nish a scene of literary repose and enjoyment among some of 
the most illustrious names in our literature. 



CHAPTER X. 

Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by 
profession . — Its incon veni ences. 

The literary character is reproached with an extreme passion 
for retirement, cultivating those insulating habits, which, 
while they are great interruptions, and even weakeners, of 
domestic happiness, induce at the same time in public life to 
a secession from its cares, and an avoidance of its active 
duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are eagerly filled 
by the many unemployed men of the world happily framed 
for its business. We do not hear these accusations raised 
against the painter who wears away his days by his easel, or 
the musician by the side of his instrument ; and much less 
should we against the legal and the commercial character ; 



110 Literary Character. 

yet all these are as much, withdrawn from public and private 
life as the literary character. The desk is as insulating as the 
library. Yet the man who is working for his individual 
interest is more highly estimated than the retired student, 
whose disinterested pursuits are at least more profitable to the 
world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered the world's 
erroneous estimate of literary labour: "There requires a 
better name," he says, " to be bestowed on the leisure (the 
idleness he calls it) of the literary character, — to meditate, to 
compose, to read and to be tranquil, should be called working." 
But so invisible is the progress of intellectual pursuits and so 
rarely are the objects palpable to the observers, that the 
literary character appears to be denied for his pursuits, what 
cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting applica- 
tion and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every 
profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors 
with so much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which 
has often closed on them while sketching their works. 

It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent 
men has been formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and 
there it will become them to find their last : for the solitude 
of old age — and old age must be often in solitude — may be 
found the happiest with the literary character. Solitude is 
the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of 
genius. In all ages solitude has been called for — has been 
flown to. No considerable work was ever composed till its 
author, like an ancient magician, first retired to the grove, or 
to the closet, to invocate. When genius languishes in an 
irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment to fly 
into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the 
deepest solitude ; in all the men of genius of the past 

First of your kind, Society divine ! 

and in themselves ; for there only can they indulge in the 
romances of their soul, and there only can they occupy them- 
selves in their dreams and their vigils, and, with the morning, 
fly without interruption to the labour they had reluctantly 
quitted. If there be not periods when they shall allow their 
days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do not 
pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening 
absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the 
Muses. Whether their glory come from researches, or from 
enthusiasm, time, with not a feather ruffled on his wings, 



Solitude of Genius. Ill 

time alone opens discoveries and kindles meditation. This 
desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the man of the 
world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida, 
whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was 
everywhere among those enchantments. 

Whenever Michael Ang-elo, that " divine madman," as 
Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his drawings, 
was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up 
from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?" 
asked a friend. " Art," replied the sublime artist, " Art is a 
jealous god ; it requires the whole and entire man." During 
his mighty labour in the Sistine Chapel, he refused to have 
any communication with any person even at his own house. 
Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even by 
undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then 
shall we deem of that feebler race who exult in occasional 
excellence, and who so often deceive themselves by mistaking 
the evanescent flashes of genius for that holier flame which 
burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly supplied ? 

We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for 
this solitude. Amidst the impediments of the world, they 
are doomed to view their intellectual banquet often rising be- 
fore them, like some fairy delusion, never to taste it. The 
great Yerulam often complained of the disturbances of his 
public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole 
from public affairs. " And now, because I am in the country, 
I will send you some of my country fruits, which with me are 
good meditations : when 1 am in the city, they are choked 
with business." Lord Clarendon", whose life so happily 
combined the contemplative with the active powers of man, 
dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed ; he 
always took pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit 
experienced during his solitude at Jersey, where for more than 
two years, employed on his history, he daily wrote " one sheet 
of large paper with his own hand." At the close of his life, 
his literary labours in his other retirements are detailed with 
a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new 
acquisition ; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the 
French, and to a third the Italian literature. The public are 
not yet acquainted with the fertility of Lord Clarendon's 
literary labours. It was not vanity that induced Scipio to 
declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him, since he 
voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum. 



112 Literary Character. 

Cicero was uneasy amid applauding Eome, and has distin- 
guished his numerous works by the titles of his various villas. 
Aulus Gellius marked his solitude by his "Attic Nights." 
The " Golden Grove " of Jeremy Taylor is the produce of 
his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales ; and the 
" Diversions of Purley " preserved a man of genius for 
posterity. Voltaire had talents well adapted for society ; but 
at one period of his life he passed five years in the most secret 
seclusion, and indeed usually lived in retirement. Montes- 
quieu quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his books and 
his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he 
deserted; "but my great work," he observes in triumph, 
" avance a pas de geant." Harrington, to compose his 
"Oceana," severed himself from the society of his friends. 
Descartes, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure house in an 
unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he passes two years, 
unknown to his acquaintance. Adam Smith, after the publi- 
cation of his first work, withdrew into a retirement that 
lasted ten years : even Hume rallies him for separating him- 
self from the world ; but by this means the great political 
inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus it 
was with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his 
Val chiusa. 

The interruption of visitors by profession has been feelingly 
lamented by men of letters. The mind, maturing its specu- 
lations, feels the unexpected conversation of cold ceremony 
chilling as March winds over the blossoms of the Spring. 
Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house, 
privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge 
they cannot impart, to weary because they are wearied, or to 
seek amusement at the cost of others, belong to that class of 
society which have affixed no other idea to time than that of 
getting rid of it. These are judges not the best qualified to 
comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations in the 
silent apartment of the studious, who may be often driven to 
exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, " Verily I have cleansed 
my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency : for 
all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every 
morning" 

When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, 
he writes to a friend : — " The favour which your friend Mr. 
Hein often does me to pass his mornings with me, occasions 
great damage to my work as well by his impure French as 



Value ©/ Time. 113 

the length of his details." — "We are afraid," said some of 
those visitors to Baxter, " that we break in upon your time." 
— "To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt 
scholar. To hint as gently as he could to his friends that he 
was avaricious of time, one of the learned Italians had a pro- 
minent inscription over the door of his study, intimating that 
whoever remained there must join in his labours. The 
amiable Mela^ctho^, incapable of a harsh expression, when 
he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had 
expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose 
a day. Evelyn', continually importuned by morning visitors, 
or " taken up by other im pertinencies of my life in the coun- 
try," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his 
losses." The literary character has been driven to the most 
inventive shifts to escape the irruption of a formidable party 
at a single rush, who enter, without " besieging or beseeching," 
as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a man of elegant tastes 
and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions, at his 
country-house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to 
the last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the win- 
dow ; and Boileau has noticed a similar dilemma when at the 
villa of the President Lamoignon, while they were holding 
their delightful conversations in his grounds. 

Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees, 
Que du pare a l'instant assiegent les allees ; 
Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux 
Qui sait s'echapper, a quelque antre ignore d'eux. 

Bbaisd Hollis endeavoured to hold out " the idea of singu- 
larity as a shield;" and the great Robeet Boyle was com- 
pelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must decline visits 
on certain days, that he might have leisure to finish some of 
his works.* 

* This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's ' ' Life of Boyle," 
p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally weak frame, 
and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation, that this adver- 
tisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, ' ' to desire to be 
excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very extraordinary) two 
days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays and Fridays (both 
foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the afternoons, 
that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits, to range his 
papers, and fill up the lacunce of them, and to take some care of his affairs 
in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have their face often 
changed by the public calamities there." He ordered likewise a board to 
be placed over his door, with an inscription signifying when he did, and 
when he did not receive visits. — E». 

I 



114 Literary Character. 

Boccaccio has given an interesting account of the mode of 
life of the studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that 
Petrarch would not suffer his hours of study to be broken 
into even by the person whom of all men he loved most, and 
did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who during 
that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the 
works of his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted 
his study for his garden, where he delighted to open his heart 
in mutual confidence. 

But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, 
at length is not borne without repining. To tame the fervid 
wildness of youth to the strict regularities of study, is a 
sacrifice performed by the votary ; but even Milton appears 
to have felt this irksome period of life ; for in the preface to 
" Smectvmnuus" he says: — "It is but justice not to defraud of 
due esteem the wearisome labours and studious watching s 
wherein I. have spent and tired out almost a whole youth." 
Cowley, that enthusiast for seclusion, in his retirement calls 
himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have seen an original 
letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his eagerness 
to see Sir G-eorge Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a 
copy of which he had sent over the town, without obtaining 
one, being " either all bought up, or burnt in the fire of Lon- 
don." * — " I am the more desirous," he says, " because it is a 
subject in which I am most deeply interested. Thus Cowley 
was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know 
he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. 
We find even Gibbon, with all his fame about him, anti- 
cipating the dread he entertained of solitude in advanced life. 
"1 feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic solitude, 
however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even 
by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more 
painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again : — 
" Your visit has only served to remind me that man, how- 

* This event happening when London was the chief emporium of 
books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively rare. 
The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the vaults 
below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the stock 
was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few copies 
which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued iu 
consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published 
about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector, 
Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in his 
library.— Ed. ■ 



Solitude of Genius. 115 

ever amused or occupied in his closet, was not made to live 
alone." 

Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of 
Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture 
of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.* But we have 
Shekstone, and Geat, and Swiet. The heart of Shenstone 
bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude : — " Now I am come 
from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce 
my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make 
me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life 
I foresee I shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and de- 
jected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as 
becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though 
it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's com- 
plaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a 
poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture 
throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but 
suffering poet : — 

Tedious again to curse the drizzling day, 

Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow, 
Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey 

The self-sarne hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow. 

Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of 
solitude ; and at length his despair closed with idiotism. 
Even the playful muse of G-kesset throws a sombre queru- 
lousness over the solitude of men of genius : — 

Je les vois, victimes du genie, 

Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, 

Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie ! 

Vingt ans d' ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire. 

Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconve- 
niences of solitude ! It ceases to be a question whether men 
of genius should blend with the masses of society : for whe- 
ther in solitude, or in the world, of all others they must 
learn to live with themselves. It is in the world that they 
borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish ; 
but the flame of genius can only be lighted in their own 
solitary breast. 

* See the article on Cowley in " Calamities of Authors." 



i 2 



116 Literary Character. 



CHAPTER XI. 

The meditations of genius. — A work on the art of meditation not yet pro- 
duced. — Predisposing the mind. — Imagination awakens imagination. — 
Generating feelings by music. — Slight habits. — Darkness and silence, by 
suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our con- 
ceptions. — The arts of memory. — Memory the foundation of genius. — 
Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary character. 
■ — And to assist their studies. — The meditations of genius depend on 
habit. — Of the night-time. — A day of meditation should precede a day 
of composition. — Works of magnitude from slight conceptions. — 0/ 
thoughts never written. — The art of meditation exercised at all hours 
and places. — Continuity of attention the source of philosophical dis- 
coveries. — Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius. 

A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, 
forms one of the characteristics of genius. To think, and to 
feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius — 
the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. There is 
a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our hearts ; 
he who can hold the one, knows how to think ; and he who 
can move the other, knows how to feel. 

A work on the art of meditation has not yet heen pro- 
duced ; yet such a work might prove of immense advantage 
to him who never happened to have more than one solitary 
idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced 
a great system. Thus probably we owe Adam Smith to the 
French economists. And a loose hint has conducted to a 
new discovery. Thus Gtraed, taking advantage of an idea 
first started by Fenelon, produced his " Synonymes." But 
while, in every manual art, every great workman improves 
on his predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding 
the facility of practice, and our incessant experience, millions 
are yet ignorant of the first rudiments ; and men of genius 
themselves are rarely acquainted with the materials they are 
working on. Certain constituent principles of the mind itself, 
which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer 
many important regulations in this desirable art. We may 
even suspect, since men of genius in the present age have 
confided to us the secrets of their studies, that this art may 
be carried on by more obvious means than at first would ap- 
pear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical 
habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single 
contrivance, as by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery 
"by which we track the flight of time. Many secrets in this 



Powers of Mind. 117 

art of the mind yet remain as insulated facts, which may- 
hereafter enter into an experimental history. 

Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. He 
thinks it obtains a stationary point, from whence it can never 
advance, occurring before the middle of life. " When the 
powers of nature have attained their intended energy, they 
can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree. 
Nothing then remains but practice and experiefice ; and per- 
haps why they do so little may he worth inquiry T* The 
result of this inquiry would probably lay a broader founda- 
tion for this art of the mind than we have hitherto possessed. 
Adam Ferguson has expressed himself with sublimity : — 
" The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame of 
a meteor, shines only while his motion continues ; the mo- 
ments of rest and of obscurity are the same." What is this 
art of meditation, but the power of withdrawing ourselves 
from the world, to view that world moving within ourselves, 
while we are in repose ? As the artist, by an optical instru- 
ment, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape 
around him, and patiently traces all nature in that small 
space. 

There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of 
genius can be made to take a particular disposition or train 
of ideas. It is a remarkable circumstance in the studies of 
men of genius, that previous to composition they have often 
awakened their imagination by the imagination of their 
favourite masters. By touching a magnet, they become a 
magnet. A circumstance has been recorded of Gray, by Mr. 
Mathias, " as worthy of all acceptation among the higher 
votaries of the divine art, when they are assured that Mr. 
Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without pre- 
viously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of 
Spenser." But the circumstance was not unusual with Mal- 
herbe, Corneille, and Racine ; and the most fervid verses of 
Homer, and the most tender of Euripides, were often re- 
peated by Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same ex- 
citing intercourse of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us 
how his eloquence caught inspiration from a constant study 
of the Latin and Grecian poetry ; and it has been recorded of 
Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that he never 
undertook any considerable enterprise without animating his 

* I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in Johnson's 
"Letters to Mrs. Thrale," vol. i. p. 296. 



118 Literary Character. 

genius by having read to him the character of Achilles in 
the first Iliad ; although he acknowledged that the enthu- 
siasm he caught came rather from the poet than the hero. 
When Bosstjet had to compose a funeral oration, he was 
accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to rumi- 
nate over the pages of Homer ; and when asked the reason 
of this habit, he exclaimed, in these lines — 

magnam mihi mentem, animuinque 

Delius inspiret Vates. 

It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that 
many have first generated their feelings by the symphonies 
of music. Aleieri often before he wrote prepared his mind 
by listening to music : " Almost all my tragedies were 
sketched in my mind either in the act of hearing music, or a 
few hours after" — a circumstance which has been recorded 
of many others. Lord Bacon had music often played in the 
room adjoining his study : Milton listened to his organ for 
his solemn inspiration, and music was even necessary to 
Warbitrton. The symphonies which awoke in the poet 
sublime emotions, might have composed the inventive mind 
of the great critic in the visions of his theoretical mysteries. 
A celebrated French preacher, Bourdaloue or Massillon, was 
once found playing on a violin, to screw his mind up to the 
pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a short in- 
terval he was to preach before the court. Curran's favou- 
rite mode of meditation was with his violin in his hand ; for 
hours together would he forget himself, running voluntaries 
over the strings, while his imagination in collecting its tones 
was opening all his faculties for the coming emergency at 
the bar. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his " Lisa," 
commonly called La Joconde, he had musicians constantly in 
waiting, whose light harmonies, by their associations, in- 
spired feelings of 

Tipsy dance and revelry. 

There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, 
which assist the action of the mind; but these are of a 
nature so trivial, that they seem ridiculous when they have 
not been experienced : but the imaginative race exist by the 
acts of imagination. Haydn would never sit down to com- 
pose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring, 
and the linest paper to write down his musical compositions. 



Peculiarities of Genius. 119 

RorssEAr has told us, when occupied by his celebrated ro- 
mance, of the influence of the rose-coloured knots of ribbon 
which tied his portfolio, his fine paper, his brilliant ink, and 
his gold sand. Similar facts are related of many. Whenever 
Apostolo Zexo, the predecessor of Metastasio, prepared 
himself to compose a new drama, he used to say to himself, 
"Apostolo ! recordati die questa e la prima opera die dai in 
luce" — ' ; Apostolo! remember that this is the first opera you 
are presenting to the public." We are scarcely aware how 
we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations : 
De Luc was subject to violent bursts of passion ; but he 
calmed the interior tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth 
with sweets and comfits. When GrOLDONi found his sleep 
disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating from the stu- 
dies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by con- 
ning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, trans- 
lating some word into Tuscan and French ; which being a 
very uninteresting occupation, at the third or fourth version 
this recipe never failed. This was an art of withdrawing 
attention from the greater to the less emotion ; by which, as 
the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. Mendelssohn, 
whose feeble and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the 
last stage of suffering by intellectual exertion, when engaged 
in any point of difficulty, would in an instant contrive a 
perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically going to 
the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his 
neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be 
concerned in the government of our thoughts. 

It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers 
cannot pursue their intellectual operations amidst the dis- 
tractions of light and noise. With them, attention to what 
is passing within is interrupted by the discordant impressions 
from objects pressing and obtruding on the external senses. 
There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley and 
others, of authors who have pursued their literary works 
amidst conversation and their family ; but such minds are 
not the most original thinkers, and the most refined writers ; 
or their subjects are of a nature which requires little more 
than judgment and diligence. It is the mind only in its 
fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation 
produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. 
In Plutarch's time they showed a subterraneous place of 
study built by Demosthenes, and where he often continued 



120 Literary Character. 

for two or three months together. Malebranche, Hobbes, 
Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they 
wrote, to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the 
mind, " in the spacious circuits of her musing." It is in 
proportion as we can suspend the exercise of all our other 
senses that the liveliness of our conception increases — this is 
the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of our 
times ; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil — 
whose attention wandered on every passing object, which 
unfitted him for study— should be instructed in a darkened 
apartment, he was aware of this principle ; the boy would 
learn, and retain what he learned, ten times as well. We 
close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, 
or trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded 
away in our recollection. The study of an author or an 
artist would be ill placed in the midst of a beautiful land- 
scape ; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from day's garish 
eye," is the man of genius. A secluded and naked apart- 
ment, with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of 
paper, was for fifty years the study of Buffon ; the single 
ornament was a print of Newton placed before his ej^es — 
nothing broke into the unity of his reveries. Cumberland's 
liveliest comedy, The West Indian, was written in an unfur- 
nished apartment, close in front of an Irish turf-stack ; and 
our comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the 
situation. " In all my hours of study," says that elegant 
writer, " it has been through life my object so to locate my- 
self as to have little or nothing to distract my attention, and 
therefore brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever 
avoided. A dead wall, or, as in the present case, an Irish 
turf-stack, are not attractions that can call off the fancy 
from its pursuits ; and whilst in these pursuits it can find 
interest and occupation, it wants no outward aid to cheer it. 
My father, I believe, rather wondered at my choice." The 
principle ascertained, the consequences are obvious. 

The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention 
of the studious ; they open a world of undivulged mysteries, 
where every one seems to form some discovery of his own, 
rather exciting his astonishment than enlarging his compre- 
hension. Le Sage, a modern philosopher, had a memory 
singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring languages, and 
deficient in all those studies which depend on the exercise of 
the memory, it became the object of his subsequent exertions 



Conduct of Thought. 121 

to supply this deficiency by the order and method he observed 
in arranging every new fact or idea he obtained ; so that in 
reality with a very bad memory, it appears that he was still 
enabled to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he 
had stored up. JorcN" Hunter happily illustrated the advan- 
tages which every one derives from putting his thoughts in 
writing, " it resembles a tradesman taking stock ; without 
which he never knows either what he possesses, or in what 
he is deficient." The late William Htjttof, a man of an 
original cast of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a 
book which he had divided into 365 columns, according to 
the days of the year : he resolved to try to recollect an anec- 
dote, for every column, as insignificant and remote as he was 
able, rejecting all under ten years of age ; and to his surprise,, 
he filled those spaces for small reminiscences, within ten 
columns ; but till this experiment had been made, he never 
conceived the extent of his faculty. Wole, the German 
metaphysician, relates of himself that he had, by the most 
persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his 
algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his 
methods merely by the aid of his imagination and memory ; 
and when in the daytime he verified the one and the other of 
these operations, he had always found them true. Unques- 
tionably, such astonishing instances of a well-regulated 
memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed 
by frequent associations. When we reflect that whatever we 
know, and whatever we feel, are the very smallest portions of 
all the knowledge we have been acquiring, and all the feelings 
we have experienced through life, how desirable would be 
that art which should again open the scenes which have 
vanished, and revivify the emotions which other impressions 
have effaced ? But the faculty of memory, although perhaps 
the most manageable of all others, is considered a subordinate 
one ; it seems only a grasping and accumulating power, and 
in the work of genius is imagined to produce nothing of itself; 
yet is memory the foundation of Genius, whenever this faculty 
is associated with imagination and passion ; with men of 
genius it is a chronology not merely of events, but of emo- 
tions ; hence they remember nothing that is, not interesting 
to their feelings. Persons of inferior capacity have imperfect 
recollections from feeble impressions. Are not the incidents 
of the great novelist often founded on the common ones of 
life ? and the personages so admirably alive in his fictions, 



122 Literary Character. 

were they not discovered among the crowd ? The ancients 
have described the Muses as the daughters of Memory ; an 
elegant fiction, indicating the natural and intimate connexion 
between imagination and reminiscence. 

The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, to 
which it may have recourse, as a wealth which it can accumu- 
late imperceptibly amidst the ordinary expenditure. Locke 
taught us the first rudiments of this art, when he showed us 
how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an artificial 
arrangement ; and Addison, before he commenced his " Spec- 
tators," had amassed three folios of materials. But the 
higher step will be the volume which shall give an account of 
a man to himself, in which a single observation immediately 
becomes a clue of past knowledge, restoring to him his lost 
studies, and his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation 
makes the man more nearly entire: and to preserve the past, 
is half of immortality. 

The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist ; but 
" Of the things which concern himself," as Marcus Anto- 
ninus entitles his celebrated work — this volume, reserved for 
solitary contemplation, should be considered as a future relic 
of ourselves. The late Sir Samuel Romillt commenced, 
even in the most occupied period of his life, a diary of his last 
twelve years ; which he declares in his will, " I bequeath to 
my children, as it may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in 
this Romilly bore in mind the example of another eminent 
lawyer, the celebrated Whitelocke, who had drawn up a 
great work, entitled " Remembrances of the Labours of 
Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of 
his Children." That neither of these family books has 
appeared, is our common loss. Such legacies from such men 
ought to become the inheritance of their countrymen. 

To register the transactions of the day, with observations 
on what, and on whom, he had seen, was the advice of Lord 
Kaimes to the late Mr. Curwen ; and for years his head 
never reached its pillow without performing a task which 
habit had made easy. " Our best and surest road to know- 
ledge," said Lord Kaimes, "is by profiting from the labours 
of others, and making their experience our own." Tn this 
manner Curwen tells us he acquired by habit the art of think- 
ing ; and he is an able testimony of the practicability and 
success of the plan, for he candidly tells us, " Though many 
would sicken at the idea of imposing such a task upon them- 



Thoughts unexecuted. 123 

selves, yet the attempt, persevered in for a short time, would 
soon become a custom more irksome to omit than it was 
difficult to commence." 

Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios of 
artists, and the laboratories of chemists, and view what they 
have only sketched, or what lie scattered in fragments, and 
could we trace their first and last thoughts, we might dis- 
cover that we have lost more than we possess. There we 
might view foundations without superstructures, once the 
monuments of their hopes ! A living architect recently ex- 
hibited to the public an extraordinary picture of his mind, in 
his " Architectural Visions of Early Fancy in the Gray Morn- 
ing of Youth," and which now were " dreams in the evening 
of life." In this picture he had thrown together all the 
architectural designs his imagination had conceived, but which 
remained unexecuted. The feeling is true, however whimsical 
such unaccomplished fancies might appear when thrown to- 
gether into one picture. In literary history such instances 
have occurred but too frequently : the imagination of youth, 
measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither time 
nor ability can execute. Adam Smith, in the preface to the 
first edition of his " Theory of Sentiments," announced a 
large work on law and government ; and in a late edition 
he still repeated the promise, observing that " Thirty years 
ago I entertained no doubt of being able to execute eveiT - 
thing which it announced." The " Wealth of Nations " was 
but a fragment of this greater work. Surely men of genius, 
of all others, may mourn over the length of art and the 
brevity of life ! 

Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, 
have been contrived to assist and save its moral and literary 
existence in that perpetual race which genius holds with time. 
We trace its triumph in the studious days of such men as 
G-ibbon, Sir William Jones, and Pkiestley. An inven- 
tion by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the 
literary character were combined ,and advanced together, is 
what Sir William Jones ingeniously calls his " Andrometer." 
In that scale of human attainments and enjoyments which 
ought to accompany the eras of human life, it reminds us of 
what was to be learned, and what to be practised, assigning 
to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occasional 
recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like look- 
ing on a clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how 



124 Literary Character. 

he advances in the great day's work. Such romantic plans 
have been often invented by the ardour of genius. There 
was no communication between Sir William Jones and 
Dr. Franklin ; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher 
of America pursued the same genial and generous devotion 
to his own moral and literary excellence. 

" It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, " the 
bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. 
He began a daily journal, in which against thirteen virtues 
accompanied by seven columns to mark the da}^s of the week, 
he dotted down what he considered to be his failures ; he 
found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at 
length his blots diminished. This self-examination, or this 
" Faultbook," as Lord Shaftesbury would have called it, was 
always carried about him. These books still exist. An ad- 
ditional contrivance was that of journalising his twenty -four 
hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions 
and specimens of the method ; and he closes with a solemn 
assurance, that " It may be well my posterity should be in- 
formed, that to this little artifice their ancestor owes the 
constant felicity of his life." Thus we see the fancy of 
Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by cha- 
racter or communication, but acted on by the same glorious 
feeling to create their own moral and literary character, in- 
venting similar although extraordinary methods. 

The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with 
the experience and the habits of the literary character. 
" What I have known," sa} T s Dr. Priestley, "with respect to 
myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration and 
my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the 
mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by 
which he produced his great works, we might see nothing 
very extraordinary in the process." Our student, with an 
ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of mecha- 
nical expedients by which he secured and arranged his 
thoughts," and that discipline of the mind, by means of a 
peculiar arrangement of his studies for the day and for the 
year, in which he rivalled the calm and unalterable system 
pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only 
combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods. 
They knew what to ask for ; and where what is wanted may 
be found : they made use of an intelligent secretary ; aware, as 



Modes of Study. 125 

Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some books " may be read 
by deputy." 

Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, 
when he advised the writer first to exhaust his own 
thoughts, before he attempted to consult other writers ; and 
Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our writers, offers 
the same important advice to an author. When engaged on 
a particular subject, he tells us, " I suspended my perusal of 
any new book on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I 
knew, or believed, or had thought on it, that I might be 
qualified to discern how much the authors added to my ori- 
ginal stock." The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should 
pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, 
is excellent. If happily disposed, we shall gain a great 
step ; and if indisposed, we " shall work out the knots and 
strands of the mind, and make the middle times the more 
pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant 
competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who 
were restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was 
quiescent. To such minds the constant zeal they bring to 
their labour supplies the absence of that inspiration which 
cannot always be the same, nor always at its height. 

Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently 
describe an eminent character; such phrases as "incredibili 
industria; diligentia singulari" are usual. We of these 
days cannot conceive the industry of Cicero ; but he has 
himself told us that he suffered no moments of his leisure to 
escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated 
to his books ; but even on days of business he would take a 
few turns in his walk, to meditate or to dictnte ; many of his 
letters are dated before daylight, some from the senate, at his 
meals, and amid his morning levees. The dawn of day was 
the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John Hunter, 
who was constantly engaged in the searcli and consideration 
of new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a 
remarkable illustration : — he said to Abernethy, " My mind is 
like a bee-hive." A simile which was singularly correct ; 
"for," observes Abernethy, "in the midst of buzz and appa- 
rent confusion there was great order, regularity of structure, 
and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from 
the choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is 
the ablest commentator on the thoughts and feelings of an- 



126 Literary Character. 

other. When we reflect on the magnitude of the labours of 
Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of Erasmus, Petrarch, 
Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the 
base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake 
to admire. These were the laborious instructors of man- 
kind ; their age has closed. 

Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in 
the airy looms of fancy and wit, imagine that they are 
weaving their webs, without the direction of a principle, and 
without a secret habit which they have acquired, and which 
some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to be an* 
instinct. " Habit," says Reid, " differs from instinct, not in 
its nature, but in its origin ; the last being natural, the first 
acquired." What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility 
and proneness to do on like occasions ; and there may be even 
an art, unperceived by themselves, in opening and pursuing a 
scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest turns of wit. 
One who had all the experience of such an artist has em- 
ployed the very terms we have used, of " mechanical" and 
'• habitual." " Be assured," says Goldsmith, " that wit is in 
some measure mechanical ; and that a man long habituated to 
catch at even its resemblance, will at last be happy enough to 
possess the substance. By a long habit of writing he ac- 
quires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner which 
holiday writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly 
attempt to equal." The wit of Butler was not extem- 
poraneous, but painfully elaborated from notes which he in- 
cessantly accumulated ; and the familiar rime of Berni, the 
burlesque poet, his existing manuscripts will prove, were 
produced by perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime 
efforts of imagination, this art of meditation may be prac- 
tised ; and Aleieim has shown us, that in those energetic 
tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of en- 
thusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. " All my tragedies 
have been composed three times ;" and he describes the three 
stages of conception, development, and versifying. "After 
these three operations, I proceed, like other authors, to pub- 
lish, correct, or amend." 

"All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself !" exclaimed 
Metastasio ; and we may add, even the meditations of 
genius. Some of its boldest conceptions are indeed for- 
tuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in the perception ; 
like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the glaciers, afar 



Dreams, 127 

from the opposite traveller, moving as he moves, stopping as 
he stops, yet, in a moment lost, and perhaps never more seen, 
although but his own reflection ! Often in the still obscurity 
of the night, the ideas, the studies, the whole history of the 
day, is acted over again. There are probably few mathe- 
maticians who have not dreamed of an interesting problem, 
observes Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we 
are often so completely converted into spectators, that a great 
poetical contemporary of our country thinks that even his 
dreams should not pass away unnoticed, and keeps what he 
calls a register of nocturnals. Tasso has recorded some of 
his poetical dreams, which were often disturbed by waking 
himself in repeating a verse aloud. " This night I awaked 
with this verse in my mouth — 

E i duo die manda il nero adusto suolo. 
The two, the dark and burning soil has sent. 

He discovered that the epithet black was not suitable ; " I 
again fell asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo that the 
sand of Ethiopia and Arabia is extremely ivhite, and this 
morning I have found the place. You see what learned 
dreams I have." 

But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this great 
bard. The improvvisatori poets, we are told, cannot sleep 
after an evening's effusion ; the rhymes are still ringing in 
their ears, and imagination, if they have any, will still haunt 
them. Their previous state of excitement breaks into the 
calm of sleep ; for, like the ocean, when its swell is subsiding, 
the waves still heave and beat. A poet, whether a Milton or 
a Blackmore, will ever find that his muse will visit his 
"slumbers nightly." His fate is much harder than that of 
the great minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who on retiring to 
rest could throw aside his political intrigues with his clothes ; 
but Sir Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes of 
him, had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable 
. equanimity of countenance, not the portion of men of genius : 
indeed one of these has regretted that his sleep was so pro- 
found as not to be interrupted by dreams ; from a throng of 
fantastic ideas he imagined that he could have drawn new 
sources of poetic imagery. The historian De Thou was one 
of those great literary characters who, all his life, was pre- 
paring to write the history which he afterwards composed ; 
omitting nothing, in his travels and his embassies, which 



128 Literary Character. 

went to the formation of a great man. De Thotj has given 
a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his passion 
for study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom 
he conversed with, that he often imagined in his sleep that he 
was travelling in Italy, Germany, and in England, where he 
saw and consulted the learned, and examined their curious 
libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary dreams, but 
more particularly in his travels they reflected these images of 
the day. 

If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading 
children of the imagination, and 

Snatch the faithless fugitives to light 

with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds 
itself forsaken and solitary.* Rousseau has uttered a com- 
plaint on this occasion. Full of enthusiasm, he devoted to the 
subject of his thoughts, as was his custom, the long sleepless 
intervals of his nights. Meditating in bed with his eyes 
closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas ; but 
when he rose and had dressed, all was vanished ; and when he 
sat down to his breakfast he had nothing to write. Thus genius 
has its vespers and its vigils, as well as its matins, which we 
have been so often told are the true hours of its inspiration ; 
but every hour may be full of inspiration for him who knows 
to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of the 
mind than Pope, and even the night was not an unregarded 
portion of his poetical existence, not less than with Leonardo 
da Vinci, who tells us how often he found the use of recol- 
lecting the ideas of what he had considered in the day after 
he had retired to bed, encompassed by the silence and obscu- 
rity of the night. Sleepless nights are the portion of genius 
when engaged in its work ; the train of reasoning is still pur- 
sued ; the images of fancy catch a fresh illumination ; and 
even a happy expression shall linger in the ear of him who 
turns about for the soft composure to which his troubled 
spirit cannot settle. 

But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its 
great operations the march of the mind appears regular, and 

* One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in dreams is 
told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is well 
known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this piece 
to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild per- 
formance, possessing great originality and vigour. — Ed. 



Value of Meditation. 129 

requires preparation. The intellectual faculties are not always 
co-existent, or do not always act simultaneously. Whenever 
any particular faculty is highly active, while the others are 
languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very deficient. 
Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are un- 
questionably enlarged by meditation. It seems trivial to 
observe that meditation should precede composition, but we 
are not always aware of its importance ; the truth is, that it 
is a difficulty unless it be a habit. We write, and we find 
we have written ill ; we re- write, and feel we have written 
well : in the second act of composition we have acquired the 
necessary meditation. Still we rarely carry on our meditation 
so far as its practice would enable us. Many works of me- 
diocrity might have approached to excellence, had this art of 
the mind been exercised. Many volatile writers might have 
reached even to deep thinking, had they bestowed a day of 
meditation before a day of composition, and thus engendered 
their thoughts. Many productions of genius have originally 
been enveloped in feebleness and obscurity, which have only 
been brought to perfection by repeated acts of the mind. 
There is a maxim of Confucius, which in the translation 
seems quaint, but which is pregnant with sense — 

Labour, but slight not meditation; 
Meditate, but slight not labour. 

Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, in 
their extent and with their associations, to their authors. 
Two or three striking circumstances, unobserved before, are 
perhaps all which the man of genius perceives. It is in re- 
volving the subject that the whole mind becomes gradually 
agitated ; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is 
wrapped in mist : at first, the sun strikes on a single object, 
but the light and warmth increasing, the whole scene glows 
in the noonday of imagination. How beautifully this state 
of the mind, in the progress of composition, is described by 
Drtden, alluding to his work, " when it was only a confused 
mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when 
the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images 
of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and 
then either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment ! " At 
that moment, he adds, " I was in that eagerness of imagination 
which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters them into the 
danger of writing." Gibbon tells us of his history, " At the 



130 Literary Character. 

onset all was dark and doubtful ; even the title of the work, 
the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was 
often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years." 
Winckelmann was long lost in composing his " History of 
Art ;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he 
could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight concep- 
tions kindle finished works. A lady asking for a few verses 
on rural topics of the Abbe de Lille, his specimens pleased, 
and sketches heaped on sketches produced " Les Jardins." 
In writing the " Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with. 
" The Eape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple 
description in a few lines, till conducted by meditation the 
perfect composition of several years closed in that fine poem. 
That still valuable work, 1? Art de Tenser of the Port-Koyal, 
was originally projected to teach a young nobleman all that 
was practically useful in the art of logic in a few days, and 
was intended to have been written in one morning by the 
great Aenatjld ; but to that profound thinker so many new 
ideas crowded in that slight task, that he was compelled to 
call in his friend Nicolle ; and thus a few projected pages 
closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant metaphysician 
has recently declared, that " it is hardly possible to estimate 
the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew Newton 
intimately, informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, 
full of a variety of profound inventions, was composed by him 
from scarcely any other materials than the few 'propositions 
he had set down several years before, and which having re- 
sumed, occupied him in writing one je'dr and a half. A 
curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the 
other immortal man in philosophy, Lord Bacon. When 
young, he wrote a letter to Father Fulgentio concerning an 
Essay of his, to which he gave the title of " The Greatest 
Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous. 
The Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that 
great design which he afterwards pursued and finished in his 
" Instauration of the Sciences." Locke himself has informed 
us, that his great work on " The Human Understanding," 
when he first put pen to paper, he thought " w c ould have been 
contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the 
larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful 
to trace the history of the human mind, and observe how a 
Newton and a Bacon and a Locke were proceeding for 



First Thoughts. 131 

thirty years together, in accumulating truth upon truth, and 
finally building up these fabrics of their invention. 

Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, 
which were never written, we should discover vivid con- 
ceptions, and an originality they never dared to pursue in 
their works ! Artists have this advantage over authors, that 
their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which labour cannot 
afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated ; and those 
" studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as 
their more complete designs. In literature we possess one re- 
markable evidence of these fortuitous thoughts of genius. 
Pope and Swift, being in the country together, observed, 
that if contemplative men were to notice " the thoughts which 
suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in 
the fields, &c, they might find many as well worth preserving 
as some of their more deliberate reflections. " They made a 
trial, and agreed to write down such involuntary thoughts as 
occurred during their stay there. These furnished out the 
"Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.* Among 
Lord Bacon's Eemains, we find a paper entitled " Sudden 
Thoughts, set down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of 
Voltaire's bed, or on his table, stood his pen and ink with 
slips of paper. The margins of his books were covered with 
his " sudden thoughts." Cicero, in reading, constantly took 
notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as 
well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. 

The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in 
all places ; and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and 
amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the mind inwards, can 
form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm 
amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly. When Domeni- 
chino was reproached for his dilatory habits, in not finishing 
a great picture for which he had contracted, his reply de- 
scribed this method of study : TJk ! Io la sto continuamente 
dipingendo entro di me — I am continually painting it within 
myself. Hogarth, with an eye always awake to the ridi- 
culous, would catch a character on his thumb-nail. Leonardo 
da Vinci has left a great number of little books which he 
usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch 

* This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," evidently given 
by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in that tasteless 
volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of a poet. 

k2 



132 Literary Character. 






whatever he wished to recal to his recollection ; and Amo- 
retti discovered, that, in these light sketches, this fine genius 
was forming a system of physiognomy which he frequently 
inculcated to his pupils.* Haydn carefully noted down in a 
pocket-book the passages and ideas which came to him in his 
walks or amid company. Some of the great actions of men 
of this habit of mind were first meditated on amidst the noise 
of a convivial party, or the music of a concert. The victory 
of Waterloo might have been organized in the ball-room at 
Brussels: and thus Rodin ey, at the table of Lord Sandwich, 
while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed ar- 
ranging bits of cork, and his solitary amusement having ex- 
cited inquiry, said that he was practising a plan to annihilate 
an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that discovery of break- 
ing the line, which the happy audacity of the hero afterwards 
executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage, 
where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men 
than irksome observations on the desert of waters ? But the 
constant exercise of the mind by habitual practice is the pri- 
vilege of a commanding genius, and, in a similar situation, we 
discover Ciceeo and Sir William Jones acting alike. Amidst 
the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of 
Jones kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has per- 
petuated those elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic 
Society ; so Ciceeo on board a ship, sailing slowly along the 
coast, passing by a town where his friend Trebatius resided, 
wrote a work which the other had expressed a wish to possess, 
and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him. 

To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first 
simple idea to its remoter consequences, the philosophical 
genius owes many of its discoveries. It was one evening in 
the cathedral of Pisa that Galileo observed the vibrations 
of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof, which had 
been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual 
meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a 
new idea of science, and hence conceived the invention of 
measuring time by the medium of a pendulum. Who but a 
genius of this order, sitting in his orchard, and observing the 
descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality in 
matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by per- 

* A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published at Paris in 
1730. They are remarkable as delineations of meutal character in feature 
as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Lavater himself. — Ed. 



Great Discoveries. 133 

ceiving that the same causes might perpetuate the regular 
motions of the planetary system ; who but a genius of this 
order, while viewing boys blowing soap-bladders, could have 
discovered the properties of light and colours, and then anato- 
mised a ray ? Franklin, on board a ship, observing a 
partial stillness in the waves when they threw down water 
which had been used for culinary purposes, by the same prin- 
ciple of meditation was led to the discovery of the wonderful 
property in oil of calming the agitated ocean ; and many a 
ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing 
facilitated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation of 
genius. 

Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths the 
strictness of philosophical demonstration, converting even the 
amusements of school-boys, or the most ordinary domestic 
occurrences, into the principle of anew science. The pheno- 
menon of galvanism was familiar to students ; yet was there 
but one man of genius who could take advantage of an acci- 
dent, give it his name, and fix it as a science. It was while 
lying in his bath, but still meditating on the means to detect 
the fraud of the goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, that 
the most extraordinary philosopher of antiquity was led to 
the investigation of a series of propositions demonstrated in 
the two books of Archimedes, De insidentibus in Jluido, 
still extant ; and which a great mathematician admires both 
for the strictness and elegance of the demonstrations. To as 
minute a domestic occurrence as Galyake's we owe the 
steam-engine. When the Marquis of Worcester was a 
State prisoner in the Tower, he one day observed, while his 
meal was preparing in his apartment, that the cover of the 
vessel being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, sud- 
denly forced off, and driven up the chimney. His inventive 
mind was led on in a train of thought with reference to the 
practical application of steam as a first mover. His observa- 
tions, obscurely exhibited in his " Century of Inventions," 
were successively wrought out by the meditations of others, 
and an incident, to which one can hardly make a formal refer- 
ence without a risible emotion, terminated in the noblest 
instance of mechanical power. 

Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius must be 
frequently thrown ; it is a kind of darkness which hides from 
us all surrounding objects, even in the light of day. This is 
the first state of existence in genius. In Cicero's "Treatise 



134 Literary Character. 

on Old Age," we find Cato admiring Caius Sulpitius Gallus, 
who, when he sat down to write in the morning, was sur- 
prised by the evening ; and when he took up his pen in the 
evening, was surprised by the appearance of the morning. 
Socrates sometimes remained a whole day in immovable 
meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to one spot, as 
if in the stillness of death. La Fontaine, when writing his 
comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late 
in the evening in the same recumbent posture under the same 
tree. This quiescent state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders 
everything that surrounds us as distant as if an immense in- 
terval separated us from the scene. Poggius has told us of 
Dante, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than 
any man he knew ; for when deeply busied in reading, he 
seemed to live only in his ideas. Once the poet went to view 
a public procession ; having entered a bookseller's shop, and 
taken up a book, he sunk into a reverie ; on his return he de- 
clared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occurrence 
in the public exhibition, which had passed unobserved before 
him. It has been told of a modern astronomer, that one 
summer night, when he was withdrawing to his chamber, the 
brightness of the heavens showed a phenomenon : he passed 
the whole night in observing it ; and when they came to him 
early in the morning, and found him in the same attitude, he 
said, like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a 
few moments, " It must be thus ; but I'll go to bed before it 
is late." He had gazed the entire night in meditation, and 
was not aware of it. Abernethy has finely painted the situa- 
tion of Newton in this state of mind. I will not change his 
words, for his words are his feelings. " It was this power of 
mind — which can contemplate the greatest number of facts or 
propositions with accuracy — that so eminently distinguished 
Newton from other men. It was this power that enabled 
him to arrange the whole of a treatise in his thoughts before 
he committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of this 
power, he was known occasionally to have passed a whole 
night or day, entirely inattentive to surrounding objects." 

There is nothing incredible in the stories related of some 
who have experienced this entranced state in study, where 
the mind, deliciously inebriated with the object it contem- 
plates, feels nothing, from the excess of feeling, as a philo- 
sopher well describes it. The impressions from our exterior 
sensations are often suspended by great mental excitement. 



Abstraction of Mind. 135 

Archimedes, involved in the investigation of mathematical 
truth, and the painters Protogenes and Parmegiano, 
found their senses locked up as it were in meditation, so as to 
be incapable of withdrawing themselves from their work, 
even in the midst of the terrors and storming of the place by 
the enemy. Marino was so absorbed in the composition of 
his " Adonis," that he suffered his leg to be burned before 
the painful sensation grew stronger than the intellectual 
pleasure of his imagination. Monsieur Thomas, a modern 
French writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for hours 
against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the same 
pinch of snuff for half an hour together without being aware 
that it had long disappeared. When he quitted his apartment, 
after prolonging his studies there, a visible alteration was ob- 
served in his person, and the agitation of his recent thoughts 
was still traced in his air and manner. With eloquent truth 
Bueeon described those reveries of the student, which com- 
press his day, and mark the hours by the. sensations of 
minutes ! " Invention depends on patience : contemplate 
your subject long; it will gradually unfold till a sort of 
electric spark convulses for a moment the brain, and spreads 
down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come the 
luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and composi- 
tion — hours so delightful, that I have spent twelve or four- 
teen successively at my writing-desk, and still been in a state 
of pleasure." Bishop Horne, whose literary feelings were of 
the most delicate and lively kind, has beautifully recorded 
them in his progress through a favourite and lengthened work 
— his Commentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in 
the third person ; yet who but the self-painter could have 
caught those delicious emotions which are so evanescent in 
the deep occupation of pleasant studies ? " He arose fresh in 
the morning to his task ; the silence of the night invited him 
to pursue it ; and he can truly say, that food and rest were 
not preferred before it. Every part improved infinitely upon 
his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but 
the last, for then he grieved that his work was done." 

This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience of 
interruption, and this exultation in progress, are alike finely 
described by Milton in a letter to his friend Diodati. 

" Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, none of 
the ordinary cessations for rest or otherwise, I had nearly 
said care or thinking of the very subject, can hold me back 



136 Literary Character. 

from being hurried on to the destined point, and from com- 
pleting the great circuit, as it were, of the study in which I 
am engaged." 

Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of 
meditation ; but there is yet a more excited state, when, as 
if consciousness were mixing with its reveries, in the allusion 
of a scene, of a person, of a passion, the emotions of the soul 
affect even the organs of sense. This excitement is expe- 
rienced when the poet in the excellence of invention, and the 
philosopher in the force of intellect, alike share in the hours 
of inspiration and the enthusiasm of genius. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling a waking dream 
distinct from reverie. — The ideal presence distinguished from the real 
presence. — The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a 
variety of instances. — Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art, 
in science, and literature. — Of perturbed feelings in delirium. — In ex- 
treme endurance of attention. — And in visionary illusions. — Enthusiasts 
in literature and art — of their self-immolations. 

We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We 
have now to pursue his history through that more excited 
state which occurs in the most active operations of genius, 
and which the term reverie inadequately indicates. Metaphy- 
sical distinctions but ill describe it, and popular language 
affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which escape 
the observation of the multitude not affected by the pheno- 
menon. 

The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great 
sensibility, when all the senses are awakened by a mixture of 
reality with imagination, is the effect experienced by men of 
genius in their own vivified ideal world. Real emotions are 
raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in their 
presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in 
all the continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences 
appear to rise up before them, they themselves become spec- 
tators or actors. Their sympathies are excited, and the 
exterior organs of sense are visibly affected — they even break 
out into speech, and often accompany their speech with ges- 
tures. 

In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces 
his masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, 



Actors of Genius. 137 

where, our thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint 
impressions are so evanescent as to occur without even being 
recollected. A day of reverie is beautifully painted by Rous- 
seau as distinct from a day of thinking : " J'ai des journees 
delicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans affaire, de bois 
en bois, et de rocher en rocher, revant toujour s et ne pens ant 
points Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of 
meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the pre- 
cinct of actual existence. The act of contemplation then 
creates the thing contemplated. He is now the busy actor 
in a world which he himself only views ; alone, he hears, he 
sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps ; his brows and lips, 
and his very limbs move. 

Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes 
witches, "are imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, 
in the act of composition, those gestures which accompany 
this enthusiasm. Witness Domenichino enraging himself 
that he might portray anger. Nor were these creative ges- 
tures quite unknown to Quhsttiliaist, who has nobly com- 
pared them to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to 
combat. Actors of genius have accustomed themselves to 
walk on the stage for an hour before the curtain was drawn, 
that they might fill their minds with all the phantoms of the 
drama, and so suspend all communion with the external 
world. The great actress of our age, during representation, 
always had the door of her dressing-room open, that she 
might listen to, and if possible watch the whole performance, 
with the same attention as was experienced by the spectators. 
By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of the 
scene ; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreana.- 
ing thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the per- 
ceptions of the soul were as firm and clear as if she were 
really the Constance or the Katherine whom she only repre- 
sented.* 

Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more 
vivid exercise of genius, Lord Kaimes seems to have been 
the first who, in a work on criticism, attempted to name the 
ideal presence, to distinguish it from the real presence of 
things. It has been called the representative faculty, the 
imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call 
it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its 

* The late Mrs. Siddons. She herself communicated this striking cir- 
cumstance to me. 



138 Literary Character. 

operations, no metaphysical definition expresses its variable 
nature. Conscious of the existence of such a faculty, our 
critic perceived that the conception of it is by no meas clear 
when described in words. 

Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its 
image in a glass, perplexed some philosophers ? and it is well 
known how far the ideal philosophy has been carried by so 
fine a genius as Bishop Berkeley. "All are pictures, alike 
painted on the retina, or optical sensorium !" exclaimed the 
enthusiast Barry, who only saw pictures in nature, and 
nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence 
over the passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestion- 
able evidence of the vividness of the representative faculty, 
or the ideal presence, vying with that of reality. Evelyn 
has described one of this cast of mind, in the librarian of the 
Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at Rome. 
To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were 
living persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar 
circumstance might be recorded of a man of distinguished 
talent and literature among ourselves. Wondrous stories 
are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues ; but the 
wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irre- 
sistible ideal presence is comprehended ; the visions which 
now bless these lovers of statues, in the modern land of 
sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal force in ancient 
Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal pre- 
sence of Michael Angelo, seems to have communicated 
itself to some of his beholders : " As I stood before this pic- 
ture," a late traveller tells us, " my blood chilled as if the 
reality were before me, and the very sound of the trumpet 
seemed to pierce my ears." 

Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose im- 
pressions of objects never rise beyond those of memory and 
reflection, which know only to compare, and not to excite, 
will smile at this equivocal state of the ideal presence ; yet it 
is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it is his happiest 
and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no meta- 
physical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent. 
will avail him : unblest with it, the votary will find each 
sacrifice lying cold on the altar, for no accepting flame from 
heaven shall kindle it. 

This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of 
genius themselves ; yet when most under its influence, they 



Sensitiveness. 139 

can least perceive it, as the eye which sees all things cannot 
view itself; or, rather, such an attempt would be like search- 
ing for the principle of life, which were it found would cease 
to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a 
narrative of his enchantment ; for if he could speak to us 
reasonably, and like one of ourselves, in that case he would 
be a man in a state of disenchantment, and then would per- 
haps yield us no better account than we may trace by our own 
observations. 

There is, however, something of reality in this state of the 
ideal presence ; for the most familiar instances will show how 
the nerves of each external sense are put in motion by the 
idea of the object, as if the real object had been presented to 
it. The difference is only in the degree. The senses are 
more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The 
idea of a thing will make us shudder ; and the bare imagina- 
tion of it will often produce a real pain. A curious conse- 
quence may.be deduced from this principle; Miltoist, lin- 
gering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt all the 
delights of those elements which he was creating ; his nerves 
moved with the images which excited them. The fierce and 
wild Dante, amidst the abysses of his "Inferno," must often 
have been startled by its horrors, and often left his bitter 
and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on the great 
criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius 
are a reality ; he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How 
mysterious to us is the operation of this faculty ! 

A Homer and a Kichardson,* like nature, open a volume 
large as life itself — embracing a circuit of human existence ! 
This state of the mind has even a reality in it for the gene- 
rality of persons. In a romance or a drama, tears are often 
seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator, who, before 
they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have 
been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a pre- 
sent and existing scene. 

Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the 
visible and outward frame of the man of genius Dears witness 
to its presence ? When Fielding- said, "I do not doubt but 

* Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what they 
said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as 
long as he wills — with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer 
once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of 
law than a circumstantial scene in llichardson. 



140 Literary Character. 

the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with 
tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse 
feeling to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to 
have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached 
him. Metastasio, in writing the ninth scene of the second 
act of his Olympiad, found himself suddenly moved — shed- 
ding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears ; 
and they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not 
perpetuated his surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circum- 
stance had passed away with the emotion, as many such have. 
Pope could never read Priam's speech for the loss of his 
son without tears, and frequently has been observed to weep 
over tender and melancholy passages. Aleieri, the most 
energetic poet of modern times, having composed, without a 
pause, the whole of an act, noted in the margin — ■" Written 
under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while shedding a flood 
of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in 
this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of 
reverie. A circumstance accidentally preserved has informed 
us of the tremors of Drtden after having written that ode,* 
which, as he confessed, he had pursued without the power of 
quitting it ; but these tremors were not unusual with him — 
for in the preface to his " Tales," he tells us, that " in trans- 
lating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil ; but 
it was not a pleasure without pain ; the continual agitation 
of the spirits must needs be a weakener to any constitution, 
especially in age, and many pauses are required for refresh- 
ment betwixt the heats." 

We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, sus- 
ceptible of this state, complaining of his sufferings during 
'the poetical aestus. "When I apply with attention, the 
nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent tumult ; I 
grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." 
When Bueeon was absorbed on a subject which presented 
great objections to his opinions, he felt his head burn, and 
saw his countenance flushed; and this was a warning for 
him to suspend his attention. Gray could never compose 
voluntarily : his genius resembled the armed apparition in 
Shakspeare's master-tragedy. "He would not be com- 

* This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards re- 
touched ; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the thoughts, 
and the glow and the expressiveness of the images ; which are the certain 
marks of the first sketch of a master. 



Effect of Great Works. 141 

manded." When he wished to compose the Installation 
Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the 
power to be^in it : a friend calling on him, Gray flung open 
his door hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming 
in the first verse of that ode — 

Hence, avaunt ! 'tis holy ground ! — 

his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard, 
whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance. 

Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. 
Madame Roland has thus powerfully described the ideal 
presence in her first readings of Telemachus and Tasso : — 
" My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colouring my face, 
and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was 
Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. How- 
ever, during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think 
that I myself was anything, for any one : the whole had no 
connexion with myself. I sought for nothing around me ; 
I was they ; I saw only the objects which existed for them ; 
it was a dream, without being awakened." 

The description which so calm and exquisite an investi- 
gator of taste and philosophy as our sweet and polished 
Reynolds has given of himself at one of these moments, is 
too rare not to be recorded in his own words, Alluding to 
the famous " Transfiguration," our own Raeeaelle says — 
" When I have stood looking at that picture from figure to 
figure, the eagerness, the spirit, the close unaffected attention 
of each figure to the principal action, my thoughts have 
carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and for that 
time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman ; for 
I could really fancy the whole action was passing before my 
eyes." 

The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men 
produced on the mighty mind of Aleieri, during a whole 
winter, while he lived as it were among the heroes of 
antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and raved 
with grief and indignation that he was born under a govern- 
ment which favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often 
as he was struck with the great deeds of these great men, in 
his extreme agitation he rose from his seat as one possessed. 
The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for more than 
twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle : but as the 
natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of 



142 Literary Character. 

genius, he was a poet without writing a single verse ; and as 
a great poet, the ideal presence at times became ungovernable, 
verging to madness. In traversing the wilds of Arragon, his 
emotions would certainly have given birth to poetry, could he 
have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state of 
the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence ; for he pro- 
ceeded along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and 
laughing by turns. He considered this as a folly, because it 
ended in nothing but in laughter and tears. He was not aware 
that he was then yielding to a demonstration, could he have 
judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of mind 
and that energy of passion which form the poetical character. 

G-enius creates by a single conception ; the statuary con- 
ceives the statue at once, which he afterwards executes by the 
slow process of art ; and the architect contrives a whole 
palace in an instant. In a single principle, opening as it were 
on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things is 
discovered. It has happened, sometimes, that this single con- 
ception, rushing over the whole concentrated spirit, has agitated 
the frame convulsively. It comes like a whispered secret 
from Nature. When Malebkanche first took up Descartes's 
Treatise on Man, the germ of his own subsequent philosophic 
system, such was his intense feeling, that a violent palpita- 
tion of the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down 
the volume. When the first idea of the " Essay on the Arts 
and Sciences " rushed on the mind of Rousseau, a feverish 
symptom in his nervous system approached to a slight delirium. 
Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a pencil the Proso- 
popeia of Fabricius. " I still remember my solitary transport 
at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the 
doctrine of transubstantiation," exclaimed Gibbon in his 
Memoirs. 

This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the voice of 
poets in reciting their most pathetic passages. Thomson 
was so oppressed by a passage in Virgil or Milton when he 
attempted to read, that " his voice sunk in ill-articulated 
sounds from the bottom of his breast." The tremulous 
figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to have been viewed in the 
land of the Muses, by the energetic description which Paulus 
Jovius gives us of the impetus and afflatus of one of the 
Italian improvvisatori, some of whom, I have heard from one 
present at a similar exhibition, have not degenerated in poetic 
inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement. " His eyes fixed 



Enthusiasm. 143 

downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the 
moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead 
swell, and wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted 
and intent, moderates each impulse of his flowing numbers."* 

This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature 
into absorbing reveries when the senses of other men are 
overcome at the appearance of destruction ; he continues to 
view only Nature herself. The mind of Pliny, to add one 
more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the 
volcano in which he perished. Veknet was on board a ship 
in a raging tempest where all hope was given up. The 
astonished captain beheld the artist of genius, his pencil in 
his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the terrible world of 
waters — studying the wave that was rising to devour him.f 

There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of 
antiquity. Then the ideal presence or the imaginative exis- 
tence prevails, by its perpetual associations, or as the late Dr. 
Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly termed them, suggestions. 
"In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself becomes antique," 
was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of the 
mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep 
study, has been described by one whose imagination had stra} r ed 
into the occult learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of 
Orpheus it seemed to him that he had lifted the veil from 
Nature. His feelings were associated with her loneliness. I 
translate his words : — " When I took these dark mystical 
hymns into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending 
into an abyss of the mysteries of venerable antiquity ; at that 
moment, the world in silence and the stars and moon only, 
watching me." This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr. Mathias, 
who applies this description to his own emotions on his first 
opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the 
philosophy of Plato; "and many a learned man," he adds, 
" will acknowledge as his own the feelings of this animated 
scholar." 

Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, our 

* The passage is curious : — Canenti defixi exardent oculi, sudores 
manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditse aures, 
tanquam alienee et intents, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum ex- 
actissima ratione moderantur." 

+ Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still decorate the 
Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of the 
celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of her 
best painter of battle-scenes. — Ed. 



144 Literary Character. 

imagination is touched by the grandeur of local impressions, 
and the vivid associations, or suggestions, of the manners, the 
arts, and the individuals, of a great people. The classical 
author of Anacharsis, when in Italy, would often stop as if 
overcome by his recollections. Amid camps, temples, circuses, 
hippodromes, and public and private edifices, he, as it were, 
held an interior converse with the manes of those who seemed 
hovering about the capital of the old world ; as if he had been 
a citizen of ancient Rome travelling in the modern. So men 
of genius have roved amid the awful ruins till the ideal pre- 
sence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become 
Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. Pompo- 
isrius L^tus, who devoted his life to this study, was con- 
stantly seen wandering amidst the vestiges of this " throne of 
the world." There, in many a reverie, as his eye rested on 
the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and 
immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome 
and of the Romans.* Another enthusiast of this class was 
Bosius, who sought beneath Rome for another Rome, in 
those catacombs built by the early Christians for their asylum 
and their sepulchre. His work of " Roma Sotteranea " is the 
production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and 
perilous labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the 
week, this new Pliny often descended into the bowels of the 
earth, by lamp-light, clearing away the sand and ruins till a 
tomb broke forth, or an inscription became legible. Accom- 
panied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired 
with his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing 
the mouldering sculpture, and catching the fading picture. 
Thrown back into the primitive ages of Christianity, amid 
the local impressions, the historian of the Christian cata- 
combs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which 
were hidden beneath the earth.f 

The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with 

* Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the ruins of 
the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill ; and the impression made hy 
historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully evinced in his " Childe 
Harold."— Ed. 

f A large number of these important memorials have been since removed 
to the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican, and arranged on the walls by 
Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at Home. 
Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C. Mait- 
land's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly 
displaying their intrinsic historic value — Ed. 



Werner and Cuvier. 145 

that creative imagination which has startled even men of 
science bj its peculiar discoveries. Werner, the mineralo- 
gist, celebrated for his lectures, appears, by some accounts 
transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised this faculty. 
Werner often said that " he always depended on the muse for 
inspiration." His unwritten lecture was a reverie — till kind- 
ling in his progress, blending science and imagination in the 
grandeur of his conceptions, at times, as if he had gathered 
about him the very elements of nature, his spirit seemed to 
be hovering over the waters and the strata. With the same 
enthusiasm of science, Ctjvier meditated on some bones, and 
some fragments of bones, which could not belong to any 
known class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher dwelt 
on these animal ruins till he constructed numerous species 
which had disappeared from the globe. This sublime na- 
turalist has ascertained and classified the fossil remains of 
animals whose existence can no longer be traced in the records 
of mankind. His own language bears testimony to the 
imagination which carried him on through a career so strange 
and wonderful. ' ; It is a rational object of ambition in the 
mind of man, to whom only a short space of time is allotted 
upon earth, to have the glory of restoring the history of 
thousands of ages which preceded the existence of his race, 
and of thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous 
ivith his species" Philosophy becomes poetry, and science 
imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. Even in the prac- 
tical part of a science, painful to the operator himself, Mr. 
Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this 
enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. " We have need of enthu- 
siasm, or some strong incentive, to induce us to spend our 
nights in study, and our days in the disgusting and health- 
destroying observation of human diseases, which alone can 
enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no 
other terms can we be considered as real students of our pro- 
fession — to confer that which sick kings would fondly pur- 
chase with their diadem — that which wealth cannot purchase, 
nor state nor rank bestow — to alleviate the most insup- 
portable of human afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of 
the physiologist of genius, who elevates the demonstrations 
of anatomical inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual 
faculties, connecting " man with the common Master of the 
universe." 

This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius in 

L 



146 Literary Character. 

all great and solemn operations. It is an agitation amidst 
calmness, and is required not only in the fine arts, but 
wherever a great and continued exertion of the soul must be 
employed. The great ancients, who, if they were not always 
philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, or imagined 
they saw, a divinity within the man. This enthusiasm is 
alike experienced in the silence of study and amidst the roar 
of cannon, in painting a picture or in scaling a rampart. 
View De Thotj, the historian, after his morning prayers, im- 
ploring the Divinity to purify his heart from partiality and 
hatred, and to open his spirit in developing the truth, amidst 
the contending factions of his times ; and Haydn, employed 
in his "Creation," earnestly addressing the Creator ere he 
struck his instrument. In moments like these, man becomes 
a perfect unity — one thought and one act, abstracted from all 
other thoughts and all other acts. This intensity of the mind 
was felt by Git ay in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the 
same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome his 
rivals in a contest for leaping, he retires back some steps, 
collects all exertion into his mind, and clears the eventful 
bound. One of our admirals in the reign of Elizabeth held as 
a maxim, that a height of passion, amounting to frenzy, was 
necessary to qualify a man for the command of a fleet ; and 
Nelson, decorated by all his honours about him, on the day 
of battle, at the sight of those emblems of glory emulated 
himself. This enthusiasm was necessary for his genius, and 
made it effective. 

But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the 
operation of the imaginative existence, becomes a state of 
perturbed feeling, and can only be distinguished from a dis- 
ordered intellect by the power of volition possessed by a 
sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the 
world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the 
wanderings of fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The 
endurance of attention, even in minds of the highest order, is 
limited by a law of nature ; and when thinking is goaded on 
to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as straining any one 
of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and torpor. 

With curious art the brain too finely wrought 
Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought ; 
Constant attention wears the active mind, 
Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind — 
The greatest genius to this fate may bow. 



Power of Thought. 147 

Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become 
overpowered by their imagination. Often, in the deep silence 
around us, we seek to relieve ourselves by some voluntary 
noise or action which may direct our attention to an exterior 
object, and bring us back to the world, which we had, as it 
were, left behind us. The circumstance is sufficiently fami- 
liar ; as well as another ; that whenever we are absorbed in 
profound contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, 
and painfully agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then 
in a state of the utmost relaxation. There may be an agony 
in thought which only deep thinkers experience. The terrible 
effect of metaphysical studies on Beattie has been told by 
himself. " Since the ' Essay on Truth ' was printed in 
quarto, I have never dared to read it over. I durst not even 
read the sheets to see whether there were any errors in the 
print, and was obliged to get a frienjfi. to do that office for me. 
These studies came in time to have dreadful effects upon my 
nervous system ; and I cannot read what I then wrote without 
some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the hor- 
rors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in 
those severe studies." 

GoLD05"i, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in 
a year, confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to 
Genoa, leading a life of delicious vacuity. To pass the day 
without doing anything, was all the enjoyment he was now 
capable of feeling. But long after he said, " I felt at that 
time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence 
of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my 
sixteen comedies." 

The enthusiasm of study was experienced by Pope in his 
self-education, and once it clouded over his fine intellect. It 
was the severity of his application which distorted his body • 
and he then partook of a calamity incidental to the family of 
genius, for he sunk into that state of exhaustion which 
Smollett experienced during half a year, called a coma vigil, 
an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so 
reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a 
dream. Boerblaave has related of himself, that having im- 
prudently indulged in intense thought on a particular subject, 
he did not close his eyes for six weeks after ; and Tissot, in 
his work on the health of men of letters, abounds in similar 
cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy stu- 
dent for a period of six months. 

l2 



148 Literary Character. 

Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to 
withdraw themselves from that intensely interesting train of 
ideas, which we have shown has not been removed from about 
them by even the violent stimuli of exterior objects ; and the 
scenical illusion which then occurs, has been called the hallu- 
cinatio studiosa, or false ideas in reverie. Such was the state 
in which Peteaech found himself, in that minute narrative 
of a vision in which Laura appeared to him ; and Tasso, in 
the lofty conversations he held with a spirit that glided 
towards him on the beams of the sun. In this state was 
Malebeanche listening to the voice of God within him ; and 
Lord Heebeet, when, to know whether he should publish his 
book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the 
Deity in the stillness of the sky.* And thus Pascal started 
at times at a fiery gulf opening by his side. Spikello having 
painted the fall of the rebellious angels, had so strongly 
imagined the illusion, and more particularly the terrible fea- 
tures of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror 
as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon 
to which his genius had given birth. The influence of the 
same ideal presence operated on the religious painter Ange- 
loni, who could never represent the sufferings of Jesus with- 
out his eyes overflowing with tears. Descaetes, when 
young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with 
meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice 
in the air which called him to pursue the search of truth ; 
nor did he doubt the vision, and this delirious dreaming of 
genius charmed him even in his after-studies: Our Collins 
and Cowpee were often thrown into that extraordinary state 
of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into visionaries ; 
and their illusions were as strong as Swedenboeg's, who saw 
a terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jeru- 
salem ; or Jacob Behmen's, who listened to a celestial voice 

* In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used, ending 
"lam not satisfied whether I shall publish this book de vemtate ; if it be 
for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven ; if not I shall 
suppress it." His lordships adds, " I had no sooner spoken these words 
but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens (for it was like no- 
thing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition 
as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I resolved 
to print my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest before 
the eternal Grod is true, neither am I any way superstitiously deceived 
therein, since I did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky 
that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my thinking see the place 
trom whence it came." — Ed. 



Visionaries of Genius. 149 

till he beheld the apparition of an angel ; or Cardan's, when 
he so carefully observed a number of little armed men at his 
feet ; or Benvenuto Cellini's, whose vivid imagination and 
glorious egotism so frequently contemplated " a resplendent 
light hovering over his shadow." 

Such minds identified themselves with their visions ! If 
we pass them over by asserting that they were insane, we are 
only cutting the knot which we cannot untie. We have no 
right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy of the 
corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative 
with his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to 
have been experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, 
and which metaphysicians in despair must resign to the specu- 
lations of enthusiasts themselves, though metaphysicians 
reason about phenomena far removed from the perceptions of 
the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this fact, 
unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our 
own conceptions, this state must produce a strange myste- 
rious personage : a concentration of a human being within 
himself, endowed with inward eyes, ears which listen to inte- 
rior sounds, and invisible hands touching impalpable objects, 
for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as far as 
respects themselves all must have passed within their own 
minds. The Platonic Dr. More flattered himself that he 
was an enthusiast without enthusiasm, which seems but a 
suspicious state of convalescence. " I must ingenuously con- 
fess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm 
in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever govern- 
able enough, and have found at length perfectly subduable. 
In virtue of which victory I know better what is in enthu- 
siasts than they themselves ; and therefore was able to write 
with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a 
little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." 
Thus far one of its votaries : and all that he vaunts to have 
acquired by this mysterious faculty of enthusiasm is the 
having rendered it " at length perfectly subduable." Yet 
those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have 
declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole 
sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have 
attained."* The histories of great visionaries, were they cor- 

* Charles Butler has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical Devo- 
tion." He was a Roman Catholic. Norms, and Dr. Henry More, and 
Bishop Berkeley, may be consulted by the curious. 



150 Literary Character. 

rectly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions con- 
sisted of the ocular spectra of their brain and the accelerated 
sensations of their nerves. Batle has conjured up an amusing 
theory of apparitions, to show that Hobbes, who was subject 
to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of 
atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to 
expose him to spectral visions ; and so being very timid, and 
distrusting his own imagination, he was averse at times to be 
left alone. Apparitions often happen in dreams, but they may 
happen to a man when awake, for reading and hearing of 
them would revive their images, and these images might play 
even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick. 

But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past 
recovery,have experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, 
in those exhaustions of study to which they unquestionably are 
subject. Tissot, on " The Health of Men of Letters," has 
produced a terrifying number of cases. They see and hear 
what none but themselves do. Grenius thrown into this pecu- 
liar state has produced some noble effusions. Kotzebue was 
once absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to 
have meditated on self-destruction ; but it happened that he 
preserved his habit of dramatic composition, and produced one 
of his most energetic dramas — that of " Misanthropy and 
Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced such 
a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what' a 
physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some 
maladies, those of the brain and the nerves, which actually 
stretch the powers of the mind beyond their usual reach. It 
is the more vivid world of ideal existence. 

But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have 
experienced these hallucinations in society acting on their 
moral habits. They have insulated the mind. With them 
ideas have become realities, and suspicions certainties ; while 
events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in 
truth had never occurred. Rousseau's phantoms scarcely 
ever quitted him for a day. Baeet imagined that he was 
invisibly persecuted by the Royal Academy, who had even 
spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid memoirs of 
Aleieei will authenticate what Donne, who himself had 
suffered from them, calls " these eclipses, sudden offuscations 
and darkening of the senses." Too often the man of genius, 
with a vast and solitary power, darkens the scene of life ; he 
builds a pyramid between himself and the sun. Mocking at 



Enthusiasm. 152 

the expedients by which society has contrived to protect its 
feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which 
he has shruuk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is 
the insulating intellect in which some of the most elevated 
spirits have been reduced. To imbue ourselves with the genius 
of their works, even to think of them, is an awful thing ! In 
nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius is a para- 
dox ; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses 
have kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in 
sorrow. 

Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of 
high passion and invention ? Perhaps never has there been a 
man of genius of this rare cast, who has not betrayed the 
ebullitions of imagination in some outward action, at that 
period when the illusions of life are more real to genius than 
its realities. There is a fata morgana, that throws into the 
air a pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the 
visionary shadows glide away. " I have dreamt of a golden 
land," exclaimed Ptjseli, " and solicit in vain for the barge 
which is to carry me to its shore." A slight derangement of 
our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the faculties, 
and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent pro- 
mise of genius ; of that generous temper which knowing 
nothing of the baseness of mankind, with indefinite views 
carries on some glorious design to charm the world or to 
make it happier. Often we hear, from the confessions of 
men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most 
elevating and the most chimerical projects ; and if age ridi- 
cule thy imaginative existence, be assured that it is the de- 
cline of its genius. That virtuous and tender enthusiast, 
Fenelos", in his early youth, troubled his friends with a 
classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of 
quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with 
the piety of a missionary, and with the taste of a classical 
antiquary. The Peloponnesus opened to him the Church of 
Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piraeus where Socrates 
conversed ; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from 
Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Sach was 
the influence of the ideal presence ; and barren will be his 
imagination, and luckless his fortune, who, claiming the 
honours of genius, has never been touched by such a tem- 
porary delirium. 

To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the 



152 Literary Character. 

self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious 
works have been pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain 
destruction of the fortune of the individual. Vast labours 
attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their progress. 
Such men have sealed their works with their blood : they 
have silently borne the pangs of disease ; they have barred 
themselves from the pursuits of fortune ; they have torn 
themselves away from all they loved in life, patiently suffer- 
ing these self-denials, to escape from interruptions and impe- 
diments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they 
behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their 
studious heads — that fame which is "a life beyond life." 
Vatst Helmont, in his library and his laboratory, preferred 
their busy solitude to the honours and the invitations of Ro- 
dolphus II., there writing down what he daily experienced 
during thirty years ; nor would the enthusiast yield up to 
the emperor one of those golden and visionary days ! Mtl- 
ton" would not desist from proceeding with one of his 
works, although warned by the physician of the certain loss 
of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his eyes, 
and doubtless his fame to his comfort. Anthony Wood, 
to preserve the lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own 
to cloistered studies ; nor did the literary passion desert him 
in his last moments, when with his dying hands the hermit 
of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and his last 
mortal thoughts dwelt on his " Athense Oxonienses." 
Moeeei, the founder of our great biographical collections, 
conceived the design with such enthusiasm, and found such 
seduction in the labour, that he willingly withdrew from the 
popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the pre- 
ferment which a minister of state, in whose house he re- 
sided, would have opened to his views.* After the first edi- 
tion of his " Historical Dictionary," he had nothing so much 
at heart as its improvement. His unyielding application was 
converting labour into death ; but collecting his last reno- 
vated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to 
the world, though he did not live to witness even its publi- 
cation. All objects in life appeared mean to him, compared 
with that exalted delight of addressing, to the literary men 

* Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680, at the 
early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great work. The 
minister alluded to in the text was M. de Poinponne, Secretary of State to 
Louis XIV. until the year 1679.— Ed. 



Enthusiasm. 153 

of his age, the history of their brothers. Such are the men, 
as Bacon says of himself, who are "the servants of pos- 
terity," 

Who scorn delights, and live laborious days ! 

The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed 
by their own ardour. The young and classical sculptor who 
raised the statue of Charles II., placed in the centre of the 
Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his work, advised by 
his medical friends to desist ; for the energy of his labour, 
with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made 
fatal inroads in his constitution : but he was willing, he said, 
to die at the foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and 
the young sculptor, with the shining eye and hectic flush of 
consumption, beheld it there — returned home — and died. 
Droit ais, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth 
of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his de- 
votion to Raphael ; he was at his studies from four in the 
morning till night. " Painting or nothing !" was the cry of 
this enthusiast of elegance ; "First fame, then amusement," 
was another. His sensibility was great as his enthusiasm ; 
and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he 
would inevitably obtain the prize. " I have had my reward 
in your approbation ; but next year I shall feel more certain 
of deserving it," was the reply of this young enthusiast. 
Afterwards he astonished Paris with his " Marius ;" but 
while engaged on a* subject which he could never quit, the 
principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. Hekry 
Headlet and Kirke White were the early victims of the 
enthusiasm of study, and are mourned by the few who are 
organized like themselves. 

'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, 

And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low.; 

So the struck eagle, stretch' d upon the plain, 

No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 

View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, 

And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart; 

Keen were his pangs, bub keener far to feel 

He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel, 

While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest, 

Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. 

One of our former great students, when reduced in health by 
excessive study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the 
scholastic language of the day, not to perdere substantiam 



154 Literary Character. 

propter accidentia. With a smile the martyr of study re- 
peated a verse from Juvenal : 

Nee propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. 
No ! not for life lose that for which I live ! 

Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are 
existing with more than life about them. Yet " there is no 
celebrity for the artist," said Gesker, "if the love of his 
own art do not become a vehement passion ; if the hours he 
employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones 
of his life ; if study become not his true existence and his 
first happiness ; if the society of his brothers in art be not 
that which most pleases him ; if even in the night-time the 
ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or his dreams ; if in 
the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to recommence 
what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who 
labours for true glory and posterity ; but if he seek only to 
please the taste of his age, his works will not kindle the de- 
sires nor touch the hearts of those who love the arts and the 
artists." 

Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will- produce no- 
thing but uninteresting works of art ; not a work of art re- 
sembling the dove of Archytas, which beautiful piece of me- 
chanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one could frame 
such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that 
* secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the produc- 
tion of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spec- 
tator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these 
works have really originated. A great work always leaves 
musing. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Of the jealousy of Genius. — Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of 
genius. — A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists. — Instances of its 
incredible excess among brothers and benefactors. — Of a peculiar 
species, where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy. 

Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, 
is not, however, confined to them. In the literary republic, 
the passion fiercely rages among the senators as well as 
among the people. In that curious self-description which 



Jealousy of Authors. , 155 

LiNNasus comprised in a single page, written with the pre- 
cision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his 
constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Lite- 
rary jealousy seems often proportioned to the degree of 
genius, and the shadowy and equivocal claims of literary 
honour is the real cause of this terrible fear ; for in cases 
where the object is more palpable and definite than intellec- 
tual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect 
the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in 
the season of beauty, is more haughty than jealous ; she 
rarely encounters a rival ; and while her claims exist, who 
can contend with a fine feature or a dissolving glance ? But 
a man of genius has no other existence than in the opinion of 
the world ; a divided empire would obscure him, and a con- 
tested one might prove his annihilation. 

The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful dis- 
ease in that jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their 
existence. Why does Plato never mention Xenophon, and 
why does Xenophon inveigh against Plato, studiously col- 
lecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame? 
They wrote on the same subject ! The studied affectation of 
Aeistotle to differ from the doctrines of his master Plato 
while he was folfowing them, led him into ambiguities and 
contradictions which have been remarked. The two fathers 
of our poetry, Chaucer and Gower, suffered their friendship 
to be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer 
bitterly reflects on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his 
tales : " Of all such cursed stories I say fy !" and Gower, 
evidently in return, erased those verses in praise of his friend 
which he had inserted in the first copy of his " Confessio 
Amantis." Why did Cor^eille, tottering to the grave, 
when Racine consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the 
author never to write another ? Why does Voltaire con- 
tinually detract from the sublimity of Corneille, the sweet- 
ness of Pacine, and the fire of Crebillon ? Why did Dryden 
never speak of Gtwat with kindness but when in his grave, 
then acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic ? 
Why did Leibnitz speak slightingly of Locke's Essay, and 
meditate on nothing less than the complete overthrow of 
Newton's system ? Why, when Boccaccio sent to Petrarch 
a copy of Dante, declaring that the work was like a first 
light which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly 
observe that he had not been anxious to inquire after it, for 



156 Literary Character. 

intending himself to compose in the vernacular idiom, he had 
no wish to he considered as a plagiary ? and he only allows 
Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar idiom, 
which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly 
Petrarch could behold the solitary iEtna before him, in the 
" Inferno," while he shrunk into himself with the painful 
consciousness of the existence of another poet, obscuring his 
own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord Shaftesbury 
treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great 
writers of his own times — Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and 
Prior. We cannot imagine that his lordship was so entirely 
destitute of every feeling of wit and genius as would appear 
by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and genius of his 
age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different 
motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which 
even a great writer often experiences when he comes in con- 
tact with his living rivals, and hardily, if not impudently, 
practises those arts of critical detraction to raise a moment's 
delusion, which can gratify no one but himself. 

The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper 
the malignancy of literary jealousy, and has impelled some 
men of genius to an incredible excess. A memorable example 
offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr. William and 
Johist Hunter, both great characters fitted to be rivals ; but 
Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had 
placed a bar to rivalry. John, without any determined pur- 
suit in his youth, was received by his brother at the height 
of his celebrity ; the doctor initiated him into his school ; 
they performed their experiments together; and William 
Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great 
genius of his brother. After this close connexion in all their 
studies and discoveries, Dr. William Hunter published his 
magnificent work — the proud favourite of his heart, the 
assertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of the 
celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing 
of his brother, should turn on that wing to clip it ? John 
Hunter put in his claim to the chief discovery ; it was 
answered by his brother. The Royal Society, to whom they 
appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. 
The blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for 
ever separated the brothers — the brothers of genius. 

Such, too, was the jealousy which separated Agostlnx) and 
Anjs'ibal Cabbacci, whom their cousin Ludovico for so many 



Jealousy of Artists. 157 

years had attempted to unite, and who, during the time their 
academy existed, worked together, combining their separate 
powers.* The learning and the philosophy of Agostino 
assisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but 
Annibal was jealous of the more literary and poetical cha- 
racter of Agostino, and, by his sarcastic humour, frequently 
mortified his learned brother. Alike great artists, when once 
employed on the same work, Agostino was thought to have 
excelled his* brother. Annibal, sullen and scornful, imme- 
diately broke with him ; and their patron, Cardinal Farnese, 
was compelled to separate the brothers. Their fate is 
striking : Agostino, divided from his brother Annibal, sunk 
into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a premature 
death, while Annibal closed his days not long after in a state 
of distraction. The brothers of Nature and Art could not 
live together, and could not live separate. 

The history of artists abounds with instances of jealousy, 
perhaps more than that of any other class of men of genius. 
Hudson, the master of Reynolds, could not endure the 
sight of his rising pupil, and would not suffer him to con- 
clude the term of his apprenticeship ; while even the mild 
and elegant Reynolds himself became so jealous of Wilson, 
that he took every opportunity of depreciating his singular 
excellence. Stung by the madness of jealousy, Barry one 
day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures, burst out, " Such 
poor flimsy stuff as your discourses ! " clenching his fist in the 
agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, 
Barry bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and 
deeply grieved over the past. But the race of genius born 
too " near the sun" have found their increased sensibility 
flame into crimes of a deeper dye — crimes attesting the 
treachery and the violence of the professors of an art which, 
it appears, in softening the souls of others, does not neces- 
sarily mollify those of the artists themselves. The dreadful 
story of Andrea del Castagno seems not doubtful. Having 
been taught the discovery of painting in oil by Domenico 
Venetiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the generous 
friend who had confided that great secret to him, Andrea 
with his own hand secretly assassinated him, that he might 
remain without a rival. The horror of his crime only 
appeared in his confession on his death-bed. Domenichjno 

* See an article on the Carracci in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. 



158 Literary Character v 

seems to have been poisoned for the preference he obtained 
over the Neapolitan artists, which raised them to a man 
against him, and reduced him to the necessity of preparing 
his food with his own hand. On his last return to Naples, 
Passeri says, " Non fu mai piu veduto da ouon occhio da 
quelli Napoletani : e li Pittori lo detestavano perclie egli era 
ritornato — rnori con qualche sospetto di veleno, e questo non e 
inverisimile perche Vinteresso e un perfldo tirannq" So that 
the Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which 
they might have forgotten had it nourished at Rome. The 
famous cartoon of the battle of Pisa, a work of Michael 
Angelo, which he produced in a glorious competition with the 
Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he had 
struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print 
which has preserved the wonderful composition ; for the 
original, it is said, was cut into pieces by the mad jealousy of 
Baccio Bandinelli, whose whole life was made miserable 
by his consciousness of a superior rival. 

In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case 
where the fever silently consumes the sufferer, without pos- 
sessing the malignant character of the disease. Even the 
gentlest temper declines under its slow wastings, and this 
infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man 
of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary 
labours and constitutes his happiness. Perhaps when at the 
height of his class, he suddenly views himself eclipsed by 
another genius — and that genius his friend! This is the 
jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair. Churchill observed 
the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of 
malignancy than I would now describe. 

Envy which turns pale, 
And sickens even if a friend prevail. 

Swift, in that curious poem on his own death, said of 
Pope that 

He can in one couplet fix 

More sense than I can do in six. 

The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in 
the next lines — 

It gives me such a jealous fit, 

I cry "Pox take him and his wit." 

If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these 



Want of Mutual Esteem. 159 

compliments to his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit 
a singular mixture of the sensibility and the frankness of true 
genius, which Swift himself has honestly confessed. 

What poet would not grieve to see 
His brother write as well as he ?* 

Addison experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his 
intercourse with Pope, to whose rising celebrity he soon be- 
came too jealously alive. f It was more tenderly, but not less 
keenly, felt by the Spanish artist Castillo, a man distin- 
guished by every amiable disposition. He was the great 
painter of Seville ; but when some of his nephew Muejllo's 
paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishment 
before them, and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh — 
" Ya rnurio Castillo ! " Castillo is no more ! Returning home, 
the stricken genius relinquished his pencil, and pined away 
in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to Pieteo 
Pertjgino, the master of Raphael, whose general character 
as a painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned 
scholar ; yet, while his real excellences in the ease of his atti- 
tudes and the mild grace of his female countenances have 
been passed over, it is probable that Raphael himself might 
have caught from them his first feelings of ideal beauty. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a defi- 
ciency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jealousy which in- 
duces men of genius to undervalue each other. 

Among men of genius, that want of mutual esteem, usually 
attributed to envy or jealousy, often originates in a deficiency 
of analogous ideas, or of sympathy, in the parties. On this 
principle, several curious phenomena in the history of genius 
may be explained. 

Every man of genius has a manner of his own ; a mode of 
thinking and a habit of style, and usually decides on a work 

* The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing, as given in 
this couplet of the same poem : — 

" If with such genius heaven has blest 'em, 

Have I not reason to detest 'em." — Ed. 

i* See article on Pope and Addison in " Quarrels of Authors." 



160 Literary Character. 

as it approximates or varies from his own. When one great 
author depreciates another, his depreciation has often no 
worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowley despised 
the natural Chaucer ; the austere classical Boileau the rough 
sublimity of Crebillon ; the refining Marivaux the familiar 
Moliere. Fielding ridiculed Richardson, whose manner so 
strongly contrasted with his own ; and Richardson contemned 
Fielding, and declared he would not last. Cumberland 
escaped a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own 
character by Bishop Watson, whose logical head tried the 
lighter elegancies of that polished man by his own nervous 
genius, destitute of the beautiful in taste. There was no 
envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs. Thrale 
not to purchase " Gray's Letters," as trifling and dull, no 
more than there was in Gray himself when he sunk the 
poetical character of Shen stone, and debased his simplicity 
and purity of feeling by an image of ludicrous contempt. I 
have heard that Wilkes, a mere wit and elegant scholar, 
used to treat Gibbon as a mere bookmaker ; and applied to 
that philosophical historian the verse by which Voltaire de- 
scribed, with so much caustic facetiousness, the genius of the 
Abb6 Trablet— 

II a compile, compile, compile. 

The deficient sympathy in these men of genius for modes 
of feeling opposite to their own was the real cause of their 
opinions ; and thus it happens that even superior genius is so 
often liable to be unjust and false in its decisions. 

The same principle operates still more strikingly in the 
remarkable contempt of men of genius for those pursuits 
which require talents distinct from their own, and a cast of 
mind thrown by nature into another mould. Hence we 
must not be surprised at the poetical antipathies of Selden 
and Locke, as well as Longuerue and Buffon. Newton called 
poetry " ingenious nonsense." On the other side, poets 
undervalue the pursuits of the antiquary, the naturalist, and 
the metaphysician, forming their estimate by their own 
favourite scale of imagination. As we can only understand 
in the degree we comprehend, and feel in the degree in which 
we sympathize, we may be sure that in both these cases the 
parties will be found altogether deficient in those qualities of 
genius which constitute the excellence of the other. To this 
cause, rather than to the one the friends of Mickle ascribed 



Prejudices of Genius. 161 

to Adam Smith, namely, a personal dislike to the poet, may 
we place the severe mortification which the unfortunate trans- 
lator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he dedi- 
cated " The Lusiad." The Duke of Buccleugh was the pupil 
of the great political economist, and so little valued an epic 
poem, that his Grace had not even the curiosity to open the 
leaves of the presentation copy. 

A professor of polite literature condemned the study of 
botany, as adapted to mediocrity of talent, and only demand- 
ing patience; but LrNKaurs showed how a man of genius 
becomes a creator even in a science which seems to depend 
only on order and method. It will not be a question with 
some whether a man must be endowed with the energy and 
aptitude of genius, to excel in antiquarianism, in natural his- 
tory, and similar pursuits. The prejudices raised against the 
claims of such to the honours of genius have probably arisen 
from the secluded nature of their pursuits, and the little 
knowledge which the men of wit and imagination possess of 
these persons, who live in a society of their own. On this 
subject a very curious circumstance has been revealed respect- 
ing Peireso, whose enthusiasm for science was long felt 
throughout Europe, His name was known in every country, 
and his death was lamented in forty languages ; yet was this 
great literary character unknown to several men of genius in 
his own country ; Kochefoucauld declared he had never heard 
of his name, and Malherbe wondered why his death created 
so universal a sensation. 

Madame De Stael was an experienced observer of the 
habits of the literary character, and she has remarked how 
one student usually revolts from the other when their occu- 
pations are different, because they are a reciprocal annoyance. 
The scholar has nothing to say to the poet, the poet to the 
naturalist ; and even among men of science, those who are 
differently occupied avoid each other, taking little interest in 
what is out of their own circle. Thus we see the classes of 
literature, like the planets, revolving as distinct worlds ; and 
it would not be less absurd for the inhabitants of Venus to 
treat with contempt the powers and faculties of those of 
Jupiter, than it is for the men of wit and imagination those 
of the men of knowledge and curiosity. The wits are inca- 
pable of exerting the peculiar qualities which give a real value 
to these pursuits, and therefore they must remain ignorant of 
their nature and their result. 

u 



162 Literary Character. 

It is not then always envy or jealousy which induces men 
of genius to undervalue each other ; the want of sympathy 
will sufficiently account for the want of judgment. Suppose 
Newton, Qttenattlt, and Machiayel accidentally meeting 
together, and unknown to each other, would they not soon 
have desisted from the vain attempt of communicating their 
ideas ? The philosopher would have condemned the poet of 
the Graces as an intolerable trifler, and the author of " The 
Prince" as a dark political spy. Machiavel would have con- 
ceived Newton to be a dreamer among the stars, and a mere 
almanack-maker among men ; and the other a rhymer, nau- 
seously doucereux. Quinault might have imagined that he was 
seated between two madmen. Having annoyed each other 
for some time, they would have relieved their ennui by reci- 
procal contempt, and each have parted with a determination 
to avoid henceforward two such disagreeable companions. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the nature of 
genius. — A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great designs. 
— The Ancients openly claimed their own praise. — And several Mo- 
derns. — An author knows more of his merits than his readers. — And 
less of his defects. — Authors versatile in their admiration and their 
malignity. 

Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, form 
another accusation against men of genius ; but the com- 
plexion of self-praise must alter with the occasion ; for the 
simplicity of truth may appear vanity, and the consciousness 
of superiority seem envy — to Mediocrity. It is we who do 
nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who 
are so much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self- inde- 
pendence, self-admiration, which with the man of genius may 
often be nothing but an ostensible modification of the passion 
of glory. 

He who exults in himself is at least in earnest ; but he who 
refuses to receive that praise in public for which he has de- 
voted so much labour in his privacy, is not ; for he is com- 
pelled to suppress the very instinct of his nature. We cen- 
sure no man for loving fame, but only for showing us how 
much he is possessed by the passion : thus we allow him to 



Self-Praise. 163 

create the appetite, but we deny him its aliment. Our 
effeminate minds are the willing dupes of what is called the 
modesty of genius, or, as it has been termed, " the polished 
reserve of modern times ;" and this from the selfish principle 
that it serves at least to keep out of the company its painful 
pre-eminence. But this "polished reserve," like something 
as fashionable, the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather 
too much colour, will in the heat of an evening die away till 
the true complexion come out. What subterfuges are resorted 
to by these pretended modest men of genius, to extort that 
praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied 
them ! They have been taken by surprise enlarging their 
own panegyric, which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care 
and copiousness ; or impudently veiling themselves with the 
transparency of a third person ; or never prefixing their name 
to the volume, which they would not easily forgive a friend 
to pass unnoticed. 

Self-love is a principle of action ; but among no class of 
human beings has nature so profusely distributed this prin- 
ciple of life and action as through the whole sensitive family 
of genius. It reaches even to a feminine susceptibility. The 
love of praise is instinctive in their nature. Praise with 
them is the evidence of the past and the pledge of the future. 
The generous qualities and the virtues of a man of genius are 
really produced by the applause conferred on him. " To 
him whom the world admires, the happiness of the world 
must be dear," said Madame De Stael. Romney, the 
painter, held as a maxim that every diffident artist required 
" almost a daily portion of cheering applause." How often 
do such find their powers paralysed by the depression of con- 
fidence or the appearance of neglect ! When the North 
American Indians, amid their circle, chant their gods and 
their heroes, the honest savages laud the living worthies, as 
well as their departed ; and when, as we are told, an auditor 
hears the shout of his own name, he answers by a cry of 
pleasure and of pride. The savage and the man of genius 
are here true to nature, but pleasure and pride in his own 
name must raise no emotion in the breast of genius amidst a 
polished circle. To bring himself down to their usual medio- 
crity, he must start at an expression of regard, and turn away 
even from one of his own votaries. Madame De Stael, an ex- 
quisite judge of the feelings of the literary character, was 
aware of this change, which has rather occurred in our man- 

m2 



164 Literary Character. 

ners than in men of genius themselves. " Envy," says that 
eloquent writer, " among the Greeks, existed sometimes 
between rivals ; it has now passed to the spectators ; and by 
a strange singularity the mass of men are jealous of the efforts 
which are tried to add to their pleasures or to merit their 
approbation." 

But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of 
genius, since the accusation we are noticing has been so often 
reiterated. Take from some that supreme confidence in 
themselves, that pride of exultation, and you crush the germ 
of their excellence. Many vast designs must have perished 
in the conception, had not their authors breathed this vital 
air of self-delight, this creative spirit, so operative in great 
undertakings. We have recently seen this principle in the 
literary character unfold itself in the life of the late Bishop of 
Landaff. Whatever he did, he felt it was done as a master : 
whatever he wrote, it was, as he once declared, the best work 
on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emulated 
Cicero in retirement or in action. " When I am dead, you 
will not soon meet with another John Hunter," said the 
great anatomist to one of his garrulous friends. An apology 
is formed by his biographer for relating the fact, but the 
weakness is only in the apology. When Hogarth was 
engaged in his work of the Marriage a-la-Mode, he said to 
Reynolds, " I shall very soon gratify the world with such a 
sight as they have never seen equalled." — " One of his 
foibles," adds Northcote, "it is well known, was the excessive 
high opinion he had of his own abilities." So pronounced 
Northcote, who had not an atom of his genius. Was it a 
foible in Hogarth to cast the glove, when he always more 
than redeemed the pledge ? Cornetlle has given a very 
noble full-length of the sublime egotism which accompanied 
him through life ;* but I doubt, if we had any such author in 
the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to him- 
self, and so hardy to the public. The self-praise of Btjeeon 
at least equalled his genius ; and the inscription beneath his 
statue in the library of the Jardin des Plantes, which I have 
been told was raised to him in his lifetime, exceeds all pane- 
gyric ; it places him alone in nature, as the first and the last 
interpreter of her works. He said of the great geniuses of 
modern ages, that " there were not more than five ; Newton, 

* See it versified in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 431. 



Self-Praise. 165 

Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself." With this 
spirit he conceived and terminated his great works, and sat in 
patient meditation at his desk for half a century, till all 
Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the modern Pliny. 

Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau 
purely national ; for men of genius in all ages have expressed 
a consciousness of the internal force of genius. No one felt 
this self-exultation more potent than our Hobbes ; who has 
indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted that there 
may be nothing more just than self-commendation.* There 
is a curious passage in the " Purgatorio" of Dante, where, de- 
scribing the transitory nature of literary fame, and the va- 
riableness of human opinion, the poet alludes with confidence 
to his own future greatness. Of two authors of the name 
of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet writes : — 

Cosi ha tolto l'uno all' altro Guido 
La gloria della lingua ; e forse e nato 
Chi V uno e V altro caccera di nido. 

Thus has one Guido from the other snatch' d 
The letter 'd pride ; and he perhaps is born 
Who shall drive either from their nest.f 

De Thotj, one of the most noble-minded of historians, in 
the Memoirs of his own life, composed in the third person, 
has surprised and somewhat puzzled the critics, by that fre- 
quent distribution of self-commendation which they knew 
not how to reconcile with the modesty and gravity with 
which the President was so amply endowed. After his 
great and solemn labour, amidst the injustice of his per- 
secutors, this eminent man had sufficient experience of his real 
worth to assert it. Kepler, amidst his sublime discoveries, 
looks down like a superior being on other men. He breaks 
forth in glory and daring egotism : " I dare insult mankind by 
confessing that I am he who has turned science to advan- 
tage. If I am pardoned, I shall rejoice ; if blamed, I shall 
endure. The die is cast ; I have written this book, and 
whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is 
of no consequence ; it may well wait for a reader during one 
century, when God himself during six thousand years has 
not sent an observer like myself." He truly predicts that 
" his discoveries would be verified in succeeding ages ;" and 
prefers his own glory to the possession of the electorate of 

* See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 471. + Cary. 



166 Literary Character. 

Saxony. Tt was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their 
genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of 
Newton, and of Montesquieu ; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and 
Corneille ; and of Michael Angelo. Such men anticipate 
their contemporaries ; they know they are creators, long 
before they are hailed as such by the tardy consent of the 
public. These men stand on Pisgah heights, and for them 
the sun shines on a land which none can view but them- 
selves. 

There is an admirable essay in Plutarch, " On the manner 
by which we may praise ourselves without exciting envy in 
others." The sage seems to consider self-praise as a kind of 
illustrious impudence, and has one very striking image : he 
compares these eulogists to famished persons, who finding no 
other food, in their rage have eaten their own flesh, and thus 
shockingly nourished themselves by their own substance. 
He allows persons in high office to praise themselves, if by 
this they can repel calumny and accusation, as did Pericles 
before the Athenians : but the Romans found fault with 
Cicero, who so frequently reminded them of his exertions in 
the conspiracy of Catiline ; while, when Scipio told them 
that " they should not presume to judge of a citizen to whom 
they owed the power of judging all men," the people covered 
themselves with flowers, and followed him to the capitol to 
join in a thanksgiving to Jove. " Cicero," adds Plutarch, 
"praised himself without necessity. Scipio was in personal 
danger, and this took away what is odious in self-praise." 
An author seems sometimes to occupy the situation of a per- 
son in high office ; and there may be occasions when with a 
noble simplicity, if he appeal to his works, of which all men 
may judge, he may be permitted to assert or to maintain his 
claims. It has at least been the practice of men of genius, 
for in this very essay we find Timotheus, Euripides, and 
Pindar censured, though they deserved all the praise they 
gave themselves. 

Epicurus, writing to a minister of state, declares, " If 
you desire glory, nothing can bestow it more than the letters 
I write to you :" and Seneca, in quoting these words, adds, 
" What Epicurus promised to his friend, that, my Lucilius, 
I promise you." Orna vne I was the constant cry of 
Cicero ; and he desires the historian Lucceius to write 
separately the conspiracy of Catiline, and to publish quickly, 
that while he yet lived he might taste the sweetness of his 



Self-Praise. 167 

glory. Horace and Ovid were equally sensible to their 
immortality ; but what modern poet would be tolerated with, 
such an avowal ? Yet Dryden honestly declares that it was 
better for him to own this failing of vanity, than the world 
to do it for him ; and adds, " For what other reason have I 
spent my life in so unprofitable a study ? Why am I grown 
old in seeking so barren a reward as fame ? The same parts 
and application which have made me a poet might have 
raised me to any honours of the gown." Was not Cer- 
vantes very sensible to his own merits when a rival started 
up ? and did he not assert them too, and distinguish his own 
work by a handsome compliment ? Lope de Vega cele- 
brated his own poetic powers under the pseudonyme of a 
pretended editor, Thomas Barguillos. I regret that his noble 
biographer, than whom no one can more truly sympathise 
with the emotions of genius, has censured the bard for his 
querulous or his intrepid tone, and for the quaint conceit of 
his title-page, where his detractor is introduced as a beetle in 
a vega or garden, attacking its flowers, but expiring in the 
very sweetness he would injure. The inscription under 
Boileau's portrait, which gives a preference to the French 
satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been 
written by himself. Nor was Butler less proud of his own 
merits ; for he has done ample justice to his " Hudibras," and 
traced out, with great self-delight, its variety of excellences. 
Richardson, the novelist, exhibits one of the most striking 
instances of what is called literary vanity, the delight of an 
author in his works ; he has pointed out all the beauties of 
his three great works, in various manners.* He always 
taxed a visitor by one of his long letters. It was this in- 
tense self-delight which produced his voluminous labours. 

There are certain authors whose very existence seems to 
require a high conception of their own talents ; and who 
must, as some animals appear to do, furnish the means of life 
out of their own substance. These men of genius open 
their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for 
some great work of no immediate interest ; in a word, with 
many unpopular dispositions. Yet we see them mag- 
nanimous, though defeated, proceeding with the public feeling 
against them. At length we view them ranking with their 
rivals. Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or 

* I have observed tliem in " Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 64. 



168 Literary Character. 

their incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened 
their individual excellences. No human opinion can change 
their self-opinion. Alive to the consciousness of their 
powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment, and their 
great views can suffer no contraction ; possunt quia posse 
videntur. Such was the language Lord Bacon once applied 
to himself when addressing a king. "I know," said the 
great philosopher, " that I am censured of some conceit of 
my ability or worth ; but I pray your majesty impute it to 
desire — possunt quia posse videntur." These men of genius 
bear a charmed mail on their breast ; " hopeless, not heart- 
less," may be often the motto of their ensign ; and if they 
do not always possess reputation, they still look onwards for 
fame ; for these do not necessarily accompany each other. 

An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is 
of his labour, which is invisible to all others, while he is 
unquestionably much less sensible to his defects than most of 
his readers. The author not only comprehends his merits 
better, because they have passed through a long process in 
his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader 
has but a vague notion of the whole. Why does an excellent 
work, by repetition, rise in interest ? Because in obtaining 
this gradual intimacy with an author, we appear to recover 
half the genius which we had lost on a first perusal. The 
work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the author, 
with much more than it contains ; and the true supplement, 
which he only can give, has not always accompanied the 
work itself. We find great men often greater than the 
books they write. Ask the man of genius if he have written 
all that he wished to have written ? Has he satisfied him- 
self in this work, for which you accuse his pride ? Has he 
dared what required intrepidity to achieve ? Has he evaded 
difficulties which he should have overcome ? The mind of 
the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while that of 
the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. 
" On many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it 
can say, and to be endowed with a mind by itself, far supe- 
rior to the mind I really have," said Marivaux, with equal 
truth and happiness. 

With these explanations of what are called the vanity and 
egotism of Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their 
own sufficiency is assumed by men at their own risk. The 
great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing 



Self-Praise. 169 

that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire. It is indeed 
otherwise with his unlucky brethren, with whom an illusion 
of literary vanity may end in the aberrations of harmless 
madness ; as it happened to Percival Stockdale. After a 
parallel between himself and Charles XII. of Sweden, he 
concludes that " some parts will be to his advantage, and 
some to mine ;" but in regard to fame, the main object be- 
tween himself and Charles XII., Percival imagined that 
" his own will not probably take its fixed and immovable 
station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splen- 
dour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb." 
After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name 
of Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own 
"Memoirs of his Life and Writings."* The memoirs of a 
scribbler who saw the prospects of life close on him while he 
imagined that his contemporaries were unjust, are instructive 
to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should be 
their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to 
exult in themselves, but to fear themselves. 

It is hard to refuse these men of genius that aura vitalis, 
of which they are so apt to be liberal to others. Are they 
not accused of the meanest adulations ? When a young 
writer experiences the notice of a person of some eminence, 
he has expressed himself in language which transcends that 
of mortality. A finer reason than reason itself inspires it. 
The sensation has been expressed with all its fulness by 
Milton :— 

The debt immense of endless gratitude. 

Who ever pays an "immense debt " in small sums ? Every 
man of genius has left such honourable traces of his private 
affections ; from Locke, whose dedication of his great work 
is more adulative than could be imagined from a temperate 
philosopher, to Churchill, whose warm eulogiums on his 
friends beautifully contrast with his satire. Even in advanced 
age, the man of genius dwells on the praise he caught in his 
youth from veteran genius, which, like the aloe, will flower at 
the end of life. When Virgil was yet a youth, it is said that 
Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed with his 
accustomed warmth, 

Magna spes altera Komse ! 

* I have sketched a character of Percival Stockdale, in ' ' Calamities 
of Authors" (pp. 218 — 224) ; it was taken ad vivum. 



170 Literary Character. 

"The second hope of mighty Rome !" intending by the first 
either himself or Lucretius. The words of Cicero were the 
secret honey on which the imagination of Virgil fed for many 
a year ; for in one of his latest productions, the twelfth book 
of the iEneid, he applies these very words to Ascanius. So 
long had the accents of Cicero's praise lingered in the poet's 
ear! 

This extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius is 
the same exuberant sensibility which is so alive to censure. 
I have elsewhere fully shown how some have died of criti- 
cism.* The self-love of genius is perhaps much more delicate 
than gross. 

But this fatal susceptibility is the cause of that strange 
facility which has often astonished the world, by the sudden 
transitions of sentiment which literary characters have fre- 
quently exhibited. They have eulogised men and events 
which they had reprobated, and reprobated what they had 
eulogised. The recent history of political revolutions 
has furnished some monstrous examples of this "subservience 
to power. Guicciardini records one of his own times, which 
has been often repeated in ours. Joviantjs Pontanus, the 
secretary of Ferdinand, King of Naples, was also selected to 
be the tutor of the prince, his son. When Charles VIII. of 
France invaded Naples, Pontanus was deputed to address the 
French conqueror. To render himself agreeable to the ene- 
mies of his country, he did not avoid expatiating on the 
demerits of his expelled patrons : " So difficult it is," adds 
the grave and dignified historian, " for ourselves to observe 
that moderation and those precepts which no man knew 
better than Pontanus, who was endowed with such copious 
literature, and composed with such facility in moral philo- 
sophy, and possessed such acquirements in universal erudition, 
that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye of the world. "f 
The student, occupied by abstract pursuits, may not indeed 
always take much interest in the change of dynasties ; and 
perhaps the famous cancelled dedication to Cromwell, by the 
learned orientalist Dr. Castell,J who supplied its place by 

* In the article entitled " Anecdotes of Censured Authors," in vol. i. of 
" Curiosities of Literature." 

f Guicciardini, Book II. 

t For the melancholy history of this devoted scholar, see note to the 
article on "The Rewards of Oriental Students," in "Calamities of 
Authors," p. 189. 



Sensitiveness of Genius. 1 71 

another to Charles II., ought not to be placed to the account 
of political tergiversation. But the versatile adoration of the 
continental savans of the republic or the monarchy, the 
consul or the emperor, has inflicted an unhealing wound on 
the literary character ; since, like PoistajS'us, to gratify their 
new master, they had not the greatness of mind to save them- 
selves from ingratitude to their old. 

Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. G-enius 
is a dangerous gift of nature. The same effervescent passions 
form a Catiline or a Cicero. Plato lays great stress on his 
man of genius possessing the most vehement passions, but he 
adds reason to restrain them. It is Imagination which by 
their side stands as their good or evil spirit. Glory or infamy 
is but a different direction of the same passion. 

How are we to describe symptoms which, flowing from one 
source, yet show themselves in such opposite forms as those 
of an intermittent fever, a silent delirium, or a horrid hypo- 
chondriasm ? Have we no other opiate to still the agony, no 
other cordial to warm the heart, than the great ingredient in 
the recipe of Plato's visionary man of genius — calm reason ? 
Must men, who so rarely obtain this tardy panacea, remain 
with all their tortured and torturing passions about them, 
often self-disgusted, self-humiliated ? The enmities of genius 
are often connected with their morbid imagination. These 
originate in casual slights, or in unguarded expressions, or in 
hasty opinions, or in witty derision, or even in the obtruding 
goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods 
over the phantom that darkens his feelings : he multiplies a 
single object ; he magnifies the smallest ; and suspicions 
become certainties. It is in this unhappy state that he 
sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel called his " Memoirs," 
or in another species of public outrage, styled a " Criticism." 

We are told that CoiiiisrES the historian, when residing at 
the court of the Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Bur- 
gundy, one day returning from hunting, with inconsiderate 
jocularity sat down before the Count, and ordered the prince 
to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect greatness, 
and having executed his commission, in return for the princely 
amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, 
which bled ; and from that time, he was mortified at the 
court of Burgundy, by retaining the nickname of the hooted 
liead. The blow rankled in the heart of the man of genius, 
and the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in Comike's 



172 Literary Character. 

" Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to 
their readers, like Comines, have had a booted head ; but 
the secret poison is distilled on their lasting page, as we have 
recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's " Memoirs." 
Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that 
great poet's prediction, that " cousin Swift would never be a 
poet ;" a prediction which the wit never could forget. I 
have elsewhere fully written a tale of literary hatred, where is 
seen a man of genius, in the character of Gilbert Stuart, 
devoting a whole life to harassing the industry or the genius 
which he himself could not attain.* 

A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court 
of Rome, presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to 
Pius VI. The bard, Mr. Hobhouse informs us, lived not in 
the good graces of his holiness, and although the pontiff 
accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of remark 
which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet ; for on 
this occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holi- 
ness drily added, " No one now-a-days writes like that great 
poet." Never was this to be erased from memory: the 
stifled resentment of Monti vehemently broke forth at the 
moment the French carried off Pius VI. from Rome. Then the 
long indignant secretary poured forth an invective more severe 
" against the great harlot," than was ever traced by a Pro- 
testant pen — Monti now invoked the rock of Sardinia; thepoet 
bade it fly from its base, that the last of monsters might not 
find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse of a poet 
on his former patron, now an object of misery — a return for 
"placing him below Metastasio!" 

The French Revolution affords illustrations of the worst 
human passions. When the wretched Col lot D'Herbois 
was tossed up in the storm to the summit of power, a mon- 
strous imagination seized him ; he projected razing the city of 
Lyons and massacring its inhabitants. He had even the 
heart to commence, and to continue this conspiracy against 
human nature ; the ostensible crime was royalism, but the 
secret motive is said to have been literary vengeance ! As 
wretched a poet and actor as a man, D'Herbois had been 
hissed off the theatre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, 
he had meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is 
there but one Collot D'Herbois in the universe ? 

* See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131—139. 



Domestic Life. 173 

Long since this was written, a fact has been recorded of 
Cheniek, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the hor- 
rid tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to 
doubt from its enormity. It is said, that this monster, in 
the revolutionary period, when he had the power to save the 
life of his brother Andre, while his father, prostrate before a 
wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent 
brother, remained silent ; it is further said that he appropriated 
to himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's 
manuscripts. " Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes 
the relator of this anecdote, " was a crime reserved for a 
modern French revolutionist."* There are some pathethic 
stanzas which Andre was composing in his last moments, 
when awaiting his fate ; the most pathetic of all stanzas is 
that one which he left unfinished — 

Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle promenee 

Ait pose, sur 1' email brillant, 
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee, 

Son pied sonore et vigilant, 
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere — 

At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to 
the guillotine ! 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions attributed to 
domestic infelicities. — The home of the literary character should be the 
abode of repose and silence. — Of the Father. — Of the Mother. — Of 
family genius. — Men of genius not more respected than other men in 
their domestic circle. — The cultivators of science and art do not meet on 
equal terms with others, in domestic life. — Their neglect of those around 
them. — Often accused of imaginary crimes. 

When the temper and the leisure of the literary character 
are alike broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors 
of his state of mind, will participate in its inequalities ; and 
surely the incubations of genius, in its delicate and shadowy 
combinations, are not less sensible in their operation than the 
composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the warm metal 
is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air 
during the moment of fusion will injure the tone. 

Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great com- 

* Edinburgh Review, xxxv. 159. 



174 Literary Character. 

positions may be attributed to the domestic infelicities of 
their authors. The desultory life of Camoens is imagined to 
be perceptible in the deficient connexion of his epic ; and 
Milton's blindness and divided family prevented that casti- 
gating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which 
have escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the 
situation of his Samson Agonistes, whom ne so pathetically 
describes — 

His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind. 

Even Locke complains of his "discontinued way of 
writing," and " writing by incoherent parcels," from the 
avocations of a busy and unsettled life, which undoubtedly 
produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of the 
materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of 
Drylen are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he 
pleads for his inequalities from his domestic circumstances. 
Johnson often silently, but eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" 
in their successive editions, of which so many had been de- 
spatched in haste. The learned Greayes offered some ex- 
cuses for his errors in his edition of " Abulfeda," from " his 
being five years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from 
his studies." When at length he returned to them, he ex- 
presses his surprise " at the pains he had formerly undergone," 
but of which he now felt himself " unwilling, he knew not 
how, of again undergoing." Goldoni, when at the bar, 
abandoned his comic talent for several years ; and having 
resumed it, his first comedy totally failed: "My head," says 
he, " was occupied with my professional employment ; I was 
uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a bank- 
ruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in 
foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, 
scattered into fragments many a noble design, and paralysed 
the finest genius. The distractions of Guido's studies from 
his passion for gaming, and of Parmegiano's for alchemy, 
have been traced in their works, which are often hurried over 
and unequal. It is curious to observe, that Cumberland 
attributes the excellence of his comedy, The West Indian, to 
the peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at 
the time of its composition, free from the incessant avoca- 
tions which had crossed him in the writing of The Brothers. 
" I was master of my time, my mind was free, and I was 
happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. 



Domestic Infelicity. 175 

The calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the 
gibings of newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks 
of the Shannon, where all within-doors was love and affec- 
tion. In no other period of my life have the same happy 
circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my literary 
labours." 

The best years of Mengs' life were embittered by his 
father, a poor artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted 
his home into a prison-house, forced his son into the slavery 
of stipulated task-work, while bread and water were the only 
fruits of the fine arts. In this domestic persecution, the son 
contracted those morose and saturnine habits which in after- 
life marked the character of the ungenial Mengs. Alojtso 
Cafo, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his 
art to perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the 
Inquisitors entirely deprived him of that tranquillity so ne- 
cessary to the very existence of art. Ovid, in exile on the 
barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his genius, in his copious 
Tristia loses much of the luxuriance of his fancy. 

"We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness 
annihilating the very faculty of genius itself, in the case of 
Dr. Beook Taylob, the celebrated author of the " Linear 
Perspective." This great mathematician in early life distin- 
guished himself as an inventor in science, and the most 
sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at 
home and abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life 
extinguished his inventive faculties. After the loss of two 
wives, whom he regarded with no common affection, he be- 
came unfitted for profound studies ; he carried his own 
personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and 
abandoned them. The inventor of the most original work 
suffered the last fifteen years of his life to drop away, without 
hope, and without exertion ; nor is this a solitary instance, 
where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised partner of his 
existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his 
studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. 
The reason which Rousseau" alleges for the cynical spleen 
which so frequently breathes forth in his works, shows how 
the domestic character of the man of genius leaves itself in 
his productions. After describing the infelicity of his do- 
mestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and 
Theresa herself, both women of the lowest class and the 
worst dispositions, he adds, on this wretched marriage, 



176 Literary Character, 

" These unexpected disagreeable events, in a state of my own 
choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new direction 
and diversion to my mind ; and in all my first works I scat- 
tered that bilious humour which had occasioned this very 
occupation." Our author's character in his works was the 
very opposite to the one in which he appeared to these low 
people. Feeling his degradation among them, for they 
treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity 
assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, 
while a strong personal sense of shame heightened his caus- 
ticity, and he delighted to contemn that urbanity in which 
he had never shared, and which he knew not how to practise. 
His miserable subservience to these people was the real cause 
of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom, 
in society ; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disor- 
dered feelings, only appeared in his writings. The secrets of 
his heart were confided to his pen. 

" The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall ; 
no joyless turbulent passions must enter there" — exclaims 
the enthusiast Richardson. The home of the literary cha- 
racter should be the abode of repose and of silence. There 
must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and alter- 
nate labours ; a taste " which," says Gibbon, " I would not 
exchange for the treasures of India." Rousseau had always 
a work going on, for rainy days and spare hours, such as his 
" Dictionary of Music :" a variety of works never tired ; it 
was the single one which exhausted. Metastasio looks with 
delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the gar- 
den of Armida — 

E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature. 

While one matures, the other buds and blows. 

Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may 
induce the literary character to hold an unwearied pen. 
Another equally powerful exists, which must remain inex- 
plicable to him who knows not to escape from the listlessness 
of life — it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose 
eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous 
labours of the elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a 
Montfaucon, and a Gough, all men who laboured from the love 
of labour, and can see nothing in that space but the industry 
which filled it, is like him who only views a city at a dis- 
tance — the streets and the edifices, and all the life and popu- 



Love of Literary Labour. 177 

lation within, lie can never know. These literary characters 
projected their works as so many schemes to escape from 
nninteresting pursuits ; and, in these folios, how many evils 
of life did they hury, while their happiness expanded with 
their volume ! Aulus Gellius desired to live no longer than 
he was ahle to retain the faculty of writing and observing. 
The literary character must grow as impassioned with his 
subject as iElian with his "History of Animals ;" "wealth 
and honour I might have obtained at the courts of princes ; 
but I preferred the delight of multiplying my knowledge. 
I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious will accuse 
me of folly ; but I have always found most pleasure in ob- 
serving the nature of animals, studying their character, and 
writing their history." 

Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the 
love of literary labour is not diminished — a circumstance 
recorded by the younger Pliny of Livy. In a preface to one 
of his lost books, that historian had said that he had obtained 
sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman history, 
and might now repose in silence ; but his mind was so rest- 
less and so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its exis- 
tence in literary exertion. In a similar situation the feeling 
was fully experienced by Hume. Our philosopher completed 
his history neither for money nor for fame, having then more 
than a sufficiency of both ; but chiefly to indulge a habit as 
a resource against indolence.* These are the minds which 
are without hope if they are without occupation. 

Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the 
literary character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices 
of those whom he loves, recalling him from his abstractions into 
social existence. These re-animate his languor, and moments 
of inspiration are caught in the emotions of affection, when a 

* This appears in one of his interesting letters first published in the 
Literary Gazette, Oct. 20, 1821. — [It is addressed to Adam Smith, dated 
July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with Mr. Millar, 
where I mention that I proposed to write the History of England from the 
beginning till the accession of Henry VII., ; and he engages to give me 
1400Z. for the copy. This is the first previous agreement ever I made with 
a bookseller. I shall execute the work at leisure, without fatiguing my- 
self by such ardent application as I have hitherto employed. It is chiefly 
as a resource against idleness that I shall undertake the work, for as to 
money I have enough ; and as to reputation what I have wrote already 
will be sufficient, if it be good ; if not, it is not likely I shall now write 
better."] 

If 



178 Literary Character. 

father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a sister, become the 
participators of his own tastes, the companions of his studies, 
and identify their happiness with his fame. A beautiful in- 
cident in the domestic life of literature is one which Morellet 
has revealed of Marmo-jSttel. In presenting his collected 
works to his wife, she discovered that the author had dedi- 
cated his volumes to herself; but the dedication was not 
made painful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. 
Nor was it so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. 
The theme was copious, for the heart overflowed in the pages 
consecrated to her domestic virtues ; and Marmontel left it 
as a record, that their children might learn the gratitude of 
their father, and know the character of their mother, when 
the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps 
surprised to find in Necker's Comte rendu au Hoi, a poli- 
tical and financial work, a great and lovely character of 
domestic excellence in his wife. This was more obtrusive 
than Marmontel's private dedication ; yet it was not the less 
sincere. If Necker failed in the cautious reserve of private 
feelings, who will censure ? Nothing seems misplaced which 
the heart dictates. 

If Horace were dear to his friends, he declares they 
owed him to his father: — 



purus et insons 



(Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis, 
Causa fuit Pater his. 

If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive 
These little praises) to my friends I live, 
My father was the cause. 

This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered 
the propensity of Horace's mind ; for he removed the boy of 
genius from a rural seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously at- 
tending on him to his various masters. GrROTius, like 
Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his excellent 
father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, 
but a great character. Vitrttvius pours forth a grateful 
prayer to the memory of his parents, who had instilled into 
his soul, a love for literary and philosophical subjects ; and it 
is an amiable trait in Plutarch to have introduced his father 
in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and moralist, and his 
brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition, inclining to 
cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronsea has immortalised. The 



Family Affection. 179 

father of Gibbon urged him to literary distinction, and the 
dedication of the "Essay on Literature " to that father, con- 
nected with his subsequent labour, shows the force of the ex- 
citement. The father of Pope lived long enough to witness 
his son's celebrity. 

Tears such as tender fathers shed, 

Warm from my eyes descend, 
For joy, to think when I am dead, 

My son shall have mankind his Friend.* 

The son of Bufeon one day surprised his father by the 
sight of a column, which he had raised to the memory of his 
father's eloquent genius. " It will do you honour," observed 
the Gallic sage.f And when that son in the revolution was 
led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed with 
his father's fame, that he only told the people, " I am the son 
of Buffon !" 

Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract 
their offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral 
existence come from the mother. The first prudential wisdom 
to which Genius listens falls from her lips, and only her 
caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The earnest 
discernment of a mother's love survives in the imagination of 
manhood. The mother of Sir William Jones, having 
formed a plan for the education of her son, withdrew from 
great connexions that she might live only for that son. Her 
great principle of education, was to excite by curiosity ; the 
result could not fail to be knowledge. " Read, and you will 
know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we 
have his own acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which 
produced the habit of study, he was indebted for his future 
attainments. Kant, the German metaphysician, was always 
fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his 
mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral prin- 
ciples. The mother of Btjkns kindled his genius by reciting 
the old Scottish ballads, while to his father he attributed his 
less pleasing cast of character. Bishop Watson traced to the 
affectionate influence of his mother, the religious feelings 

* These lines have been happily applied by Mr. Bowles to the father of 
Pope. — The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they were 
strong. 

*T It still exists in the gardens of the old chateau at Montbard. It is a 
pillar of marble bearing this inscription: — " Excelsss turris humilis 
columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785." — Ed. 

n2 



180 Literary Character. 

which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of 
Edgeworth, confined through life to her apartment, was the 
only person who studied his constitutional volatility. When 
he hastened to her death-bed, the last imperfect accents of 
that beloved voice reminded him of the past and warned him 
of the future, and he declares that voice " had a happy in- 
fluence on his habits," — as happy, at least, as his own volatile 
nature would allow. " To the manner in which my mother 
formed me at an early age," said Napoleon, " I principally 
owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is, that the future 
good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the 
mother. ' 

There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the 
mother in the formation of the literary character, that, with- 
out even partaking of, or sympathising with the pleasures the 
child is fond of, the mother will often cherish those first 
decided tastes merely from the delight of promoting the hap- 
piness of her son ; so that that genius, which some would 
produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, 
or enforce by application, with her may be only the watchful 
labour of love.* One of our most eminent antiquaries has 
often assured me that his great passion, and I may say his 
genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast researches, he 
attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for 
these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his 
father, the mother silently supplied her son with the sort of 
treasures he languished for, blessing the knowledge, which 
indeed she could not share with him, but which she beheld 
imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary. 

There is, what may be called, family genius. In the 
home of a man of genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, 
and his own pre-eminence strikes out talents in all. " The 
active pursuits of my father," says the daughter of Edge- 
worth, " spread an animation through the house by connect- 
ing children with all that was going on, and allowing them 
to join in thought and conversation ; sympathy and emulation 
excited mental exertion in the most agreeable manner." 

* Kotzebue lias noted the delicate attention of his mother in not only- 
fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development. He 
ga y S ; — " If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother al- 
ways contrived to select something for my evening reading which might 
moderate this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable 
fancy." — Ed. 



Family Affection. 181 

Evelyn, in his beautiful retreat at Saye's Court, had inspired 
his family with that variety of taste which he himself 
was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated 
Bapin's " Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved 
in his " Sylva ;" his lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in 
the arts her husband loved, and designed the frontispiece to 
his "Lucretius :" she was the cultivator of their celebrated gar- 
den, which served as "an example" of his great work on 
"forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's 
love of books and gardens, has delightfully applied them 
to his lady, in whom, says the bard, Evelyn meets both 
pleasures : — 

The fairest garden in her looks, 

And in her mind the wisest books. 

The house of Hallee, resembled "a temple consecrated to 
science and the arts, and the votaries were his own family. 
The universal acquirements of Haller were possessed in some 
degree by every one under his roof; and their studious delight 
in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors, in botani- 
sing, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed 
occupa;ions which made the daughters happy and the sons 
eminent.* The painter Stella inspired his family to copy 
his fanciful inventions, and the playful graver of Claudine 
Stella, his niece, animated his " Sports of Children." I have 
seen a print of Coypel in his studio, and by his side his little 
daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her 
father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act 
of suspending his labour to look on his child. At that 
moment, his thoughts were divided between two objects of 
his love. The character and the works of the late Elizabeth 
Hamilton were formed entirely by her brother. Admiring 
the man she loved, she imitated what she admired ; and while 
the brother was arduously completing the version of the 
Persian Hedaya, the sister, who had associated with his 
morning tasks and his evening conversations, was recalling 
all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal master in her 
" Hindoo Kajah." 

* Haller's death (a.d. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm philosophy, 
as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon, and continued 
to the last an attentive and rational observer of the symptoms of the disease 
which was bringing him to the grave. He transmitted to the University 
of Grottingen a scientific analysis of his case ; and died feeling his own 
pulse. — Ed. 



182 Literary Character. 

Nor are there wanting instances where this family genius 
has heen carried down through successive generations: the 
volume of the father has been continued by a son, or a rela- 
tive. The history of the family of the Zw t ingees is a combi- 
nation of studies and inherited tastes. Theodore published, 
in 1697, a folio herbal, of which his son Frederic gave an 
enlarged edition in 1744 ; and the family was honoured by 
their name having been given to a genus of plants dedicated 
to their memory, and known in botany by the name of the 
Zwingera. In history and in literature, the family name was 
equally eminent ; the same Theodore continued a great work, 
" The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun by his 
father-in-law, and which for the third time was enlarged by 
another son. Among the historians of Italy, it is delightful 
to contemplate this family genius transmitting itself with 
unsullied probity among the three Villanis, and the Malas- 
pinis, and the two Portas. The history of the learned 
family of the Stephens presents a dynasty of literature ; and 
to distinguish the numerous members, they have been de- 
signated as Henry I. and Henrj- II., — as Eobert I., the II., 
and the III.* Our country may exult in having possessed 
many literary families — the Wartons, the father and two 
sons : the Bfrneys, more in number ; and the nephews of 
Milton, whose humble torch at least was lighted at the altar 
of the great bard.f 

No event in literary history is more impressive than the 
fate of Quintilian ; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, 
which was composed to form the literary character of a son, 
that he experienced the most terrible affliction in the domestic 
life of genius — the successive deaths of his wife and his only 
child. It was a moral earthquake with a single survivor 
amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary 
affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation, — "My 
wealth, and my writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, 
must now be reserved only for strangers ; all I possess is for 
aliens, and no longer mine!" We feel the united agony of 
the husband, the father, and the man of genius ! 

Deprived of these social consolations, we see Johnson 
call about him those whose calamities exiled them from 
society, and his roof lodges the blind, the lame, and the poor ; 

* For an account of them and their works, see ' ' Curiosities of Lite- 
rature," vol. i. p. 76. 

f The Phillips. 



Public and Private Life. 183 

for the heart must possess something it can call its own, to 
be kind to. 

In domestic life, the Abbe De St. Pierre enlarged its 
moral vocabulary, by fixing in his language two significant 
words. One served to explain the virtue most familiar to 
him — bienfaisance ; and that irritable vanity which magnifies 
its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying diminu- 
tive — la gloriole ! 

It has often excited surprise that men of genius are not 
more reverenced than other men in their domestic circle. 
The disparity between the public and the private esteem of 
the same man is often striking. In privacy we discover that 
the comic genius is not always cheerful, that the sage is 
sometimes ridiculous, and the poet seldom delightful. The 
golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and 
when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the 
vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold 
him as one of themselves — the creature of habits and in- 
firmities. 

In the business of life, the cultivators of science and the 
arts, with all their simplicity of feeling and generous openness 
about them, do not meet on equal terms with other men. 
Their frequent abstractions calling off the mind to whatever 
enters into its lonely pursuits, render them greatly inferior to 
others in practical and immediate observation. Studious 
men have been reproached as being so deficient in the know- 
ledge of the human character, that they are usually disquali- 
fied for the management of public business. Their confidence 
in their friends has no bound, while they become the easy 
dupes of the designing. A friend, who was in office with the 
late Mr. Cumberland, assures me, that he was so intractable 
to the forms of business, and so easily induced to do more or 
to do less than he ought, that he was compelled to perform 
the official business of this literary man, to free himself from 
his annoyance ; and yet Cumberland could not be reproached 
with any deficiency in a knowledge of the human character, 
which he was always touching with caustic pleasantry. 

Addison and Prior were unskilful statesmen ; and Male- 
sherbes confessed, a few days before his death, that Turgot 
and himself, men of genius and philosophers, from whom the 
nation had expected much, had badly administered the affairs 
of the state ; for " knowing men but by books, and unskilful 
in business, we could not form the king to the government. 5 ' 



184 Literary Character. 

A man of genius may know the whole map of the world of 
human nature ; but, like the great geographer, may be apt to 
be lost in the wood which any one in the neighbourhood 
knows better than him. 

" The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith, " is that of 
a man of sense, while his actions are those of a fool." Genius, 
careless of the future, and often absent in the present, avoids 
too deep a commingling in the minor cares of life. Hence it 
becomes a victim to common fools and vulgar villains. " I 
love my family's welfare, but I cannot be so foolish as to 
make myself the slave to the minute affairs of a house," said 
Montesquieu. The story told of a man of learning is pro- 
bably true, however ridiculous it may appear. Deeply occu- 
pied in his library, one, rushing in, informed him that the 
house was on fire : " Go to my wife — these matters belong to 
her!" pettishly replied the interrupted student. Bacon sat 
at one end of his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the 
other the creatures about him were trafficking with his honour, 
and ruining his good name: "I am better fitted for this," 
said that great man once, holding out a book, " than for the 
life I have of late led. Nature has not fitted me for that ; 
knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book 
than to play a part." 

Bueeon, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of 
Montbard, at the end of his garden,* with all nature opening 
to him, formed all his ideas of what was passing before him 
from the arts of a pliant Capuchin, and the comments of a 
perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of the village. These 
humble confidants he treated as children, but the children were 
commanding the great man ! Young, whose satires give the 
very anatomy of human foibles, was wholly governed by his 
housekeeper. She thought and acted for him, which probably 
greatly assisted the " Night Thoughts," but his curate ex- 
posed the domestic economy of a man of genius by a satirical 
novel. If I am truly informed, in that gallery of satirical 
portraits in his " Love of Fame," Young has omitted one of 
the most striking — his own ! While the poet's eye was 
glancing from " earth to heaven," he totally overlooked the 
lady whom he married, and who soon became the object of 
his contempt ; and not only his wife, but his only son, who 
when he returned home for the vacation from Winchester 

* For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary Resi- 
dences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature." 




Domestic Life. 185 

school, was only admitted into the presence of his poetical 
father on the first and the last day; and whose unhappy life 
is attributed to this unnatural neglect : # — a lamentable do- 
mestic catastrophe, which, I fear, has too frequently occurred 
amidst the ardour and occupations of literary glory. Much, 
too much, of the tender domesticity of life is violated by 
literary characters. All that lives under their eye, all that 
should be guided by their hand, the recluse and abstracted 
men of genius must leave to their own direction. But let it 
not be forgotten, that, if such neglect others, they also 
neglect themselves, and are deprived of those family enjoy- 
ments for which few men have warmer sympathies. While 
the literary character burns with the ambition of raising a 
great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this 
domestic intercourse, or to indulge the versatile curiosity of 
his private amusements — for he is chained to his great labour. 
Robertson felt this while employed on his histories, and he 
at length rejoiced when, after many years of devoted toil, he 
returned to the luxury of reading for his own amusement 
and to the conversation of his friends. " Such a sacrifice," 
observes his philosophical biographer, " must be more or less 
made by all who devote themselves to letters, whether with a 
view to emolument or to fame ; nor would it perhaps be easy 
to make it, were it not for the prospect (seldom, alas ! 
realised) of earning by their exertions that learned and 
honourable leisure which he was so fortunate as to attain." 

But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary 
crimes. Their very eminence attracts the lie of calumny, 
which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of refu- 
tation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in affec- 
tion, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure 
name celebrated. The family of Descartes lamented, as a 
blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gen- 
tleman, should become a philosopher ; and this elevated genius 
was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving 
parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as 
his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to 
advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of 
Addison was educated with a perfect contempt of authors, 

* These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir Herbert 
Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give this 
account during the doctor's lifetime, in his Life of Young, but which it had 
always been his intention to have added to it. 



186 Literary Character. 

and blushed to bear a name more illustrious than that of all the 
Warwicks, on her alliance to which noble family she prided 
herself. The children of Miltox, far from solacing the age 
of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embit- 
tered his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined 
to cheat and rob him. Milton, having enriched our national 
poetry by two immortal epics, with patient grief blessed the 
single female who did not entirely abandon him, and the 
obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they 
were religious. What felicities ! what laurels ! And now 
we have recently learned, that the daughter of Madame De 
Sevigne lived on ill terms with her mother, of whose enchant- 
ing genius she appears to have been insensible ! The unques- 
tionable documents are two letters hitherto cautiously secreted. 
The daughter was in the house of her mother when an ex- 
traordinary letter was addressed to her from the chamber of 
Madame de Sevigne after a sleepless night. In this she 
describes, with her peculiar felicity, the ill-treatment she 
received from the daughter she idolised ; it is a kindling effu- 
sion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and genius.* 

Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because 
they felt the weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of in- 
trusion ; described as bad husbands, when united to women 
who, without a kindred feeling, had the mean art to prey upon 
their infirmities ; or as bad fathers, because their offspring have 
not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page. But 
the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles 
about it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not 
acted on by its occult property. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The poverty of literary men. — Poverty, a relative quality. — Of the poverty 
of literary men in what degree desirable. — Extreme poverty. — Task- 
work. — Of gratuitous works. — A project to provide against the worst 
state of poverty among literary men. 

Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually 
conceived to be. We shall find that it has been sometimes 
voluntarily chosen ; and that to connect too closely great 
fortune with great genius, creates one of those powerful but 

* Lettres inedites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203. 



Literary Poverty. 187 

unhappy alliances, where the one party must necessarily act 
contrary to the interests of the other. 

Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are 
but the increase or the diminution in our own sensations. 
The positive idea must arise from comparison. There is a 
state of poverty reserved even for the wealthy man, the in- 
stant that he comes in hateful contact with the enormous capi- 
talist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying, 
asking no favours and on no terms receiving any ; a poverty 
which annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source 
of pride, will confer independence, that first step to genius. 

Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth in 
the spirit of a capitalist does not seem to form the prime 
object of domestic life. The traffic of money is with them 
left to the traffickers, their merchants, and their financiers. 
In our country, the commercial character has so closely inter- 
woven and identified itself with the national one, and its 
peculiar views have so terminated all our pursuits, that every 
rank is alike influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by 
a market-price which naturally admits of no such appraise- 
ment. In a country where "The Wealth of Nations" has 
been fixed as the first principle of political existence, wealth 
has raised an aristocracy more noble than nobility, more cele- 
brated than genius, more popular than patriotism ; but how- 
ever it may partake at times of a generous nature, it hardly 
looks beyond its own narrow pale. It is curious to notice 
that Montesquieu, who was in England, observed, that " If I 
had been born here, nothing could have consoled me in failing 
to accumulate a large fortune ; but I do not lament the medio- 
crity of my circumstances in France." The sources of our 
national wealth have greatly multiplied, and the evil has con- 
sequently increased, since the visit of the great philosopher. 

The cares of property, the daily concerns of a family, the 
pressure of such minute disturbers of their studies, have in- 
duced some great minds to regret the abolition of those 
monastic orders, beneath whose undisturbed shade were pro- 
duced the mighty labours of a Monteaucon, a Calmet, a 
Flohez, and the still unfinished volumes of the Benedic- 
tines. Often has the literary character, amidst the busied 
delights of study, sighed "to bid a farewell sweet" to the 
turbulence of society. It was not discontent, nor any under- 
valuing of general society, but the pure enthusiasm of the 
library, which once induced the studious Evelyn to sketch a 



188 Literary Character. 

retreat of this nature, which he addressed to his friend, the 
illustrious Boyle. He proposed to form " A college where 
persons of the same turn of mind might enjoy the pleasure 
of agreeable society, and at the same time pass their days 
without care or interruption."* This abandonment of their 
life to their genius has, indeed, often cost them too dear, 
from the days of Sophocles, who, ardent in his old age, 
neglected his family affairs, and was brought before his 
judges by his relations, as one fallen into a second childhood. 
The aged poet brought but one solitary witness in his favour 
— an unfinished tragedy ; which having read, the judges rose 
before him, and retorted the charge on his accusers. 

A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbe Cotin, the 
victim of a rhyme of the satirical Boileau. Studious, and 
without fortune, Cotin had lived contented till he incurred the 
unhappiness of inheriting a large estate. Then a world of 
cares opened on him ; his rents were not paid, and his credi- 
tors increased. Dragged from his Hebrew and Greek, poor 
Cotin resolved to make over his entire fortune to one of his 
heirs, on condition of maintenance. His other relations 
assuming that a man who parted with his estate in his life- 
time must necessarily be deranged, brought the learned Cotin 
into court. Cotin had nothing to say in his own favour, but 
requested his judges would allow him to address them from 
the sermons which he preached. The good sense, the sound 
reasoning, and the erudition of the preacher were such, that 
the whole bench unanimously declared that they themselves 
might be considered as madmen, were they to condemn a man 
of letters who was desirous of escaping from the incumbrance 
of a fortune which had only interrupted his studies. 

There may then be sufficient motives to induce such a man 
to make a state of mediocrity his choice. If he lose his hap- 
piness, he mutilates his genius. G-oldoni, with all the sim- 
plicity of his feelings and habits, in reviewing his life, tells us 
how he was always relapsing into his old propensity of comic 

* This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful reveries which 
the elegant taste of Evelyn abounded with. It may be found at full 
length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, as the Biog. 
Brit. says. His lady was to live among the society. " If I and my wife 
take up two apartments, for we are to be decently asunder, however I 
stipulate, and her inclination will greatly suit with it, that shall be no 
impediment to the society, but a considerable advantage to the economic 
part," &c. 



Literary Poverty. 189 

writing ; " but the thought of this does not disturb me," says 
he ; " for though in any other situation I might have been 
in easier circumstances, I should never have been so happy." 
Batle is a parent of the modern literary character ; he pur- 
sued the same course, and early in life adopted the principle, 
" Neither to fear bad fortune nor have any ardent desires for 
good." Acquainted with the passions only as their historian, 
and living only for literature, he sacrificed to it the two great 
acquisitions of human pursuits — fortune and a family : but in 
what country had Bayle not a family and a possession in his 
fame ? Hume and Gibbon had the most perfect conception 
of the literary character, and they were aware of this impor- 
tant principle in its habits — " My own revenue," said Hume, 
" will be sufficient for a man of letters, who surely needs less 
money, both for his entertainment and credit, than other 
people." Gibbon observed of himself — " Perhaps the golden 
mediocrity of my fortune has contributed to fortify my appli- 
cation." 

The state of poverty, then, desirable in the domestic life of 
genius, is one in which the cares of property never intrude, 
and the want of wealth is never perceived. This is not indi- 
gence ; that state which, however dignified the man of genius 
himself may be, must inevitably degrade ! for the heartless 
will gibe, and even the compassionate turn aside in contempt. 
This literary outcast will soon be forsaken even by himself! 
his own intellect will be clouded over, and his limbs shrink 
in the palsy of bodily misery and shame — 

Malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas 
Terribiles visu formse, 

Not that in this history of men of genius we are without 
illustrious examples of those who have even learnt to want, 
that they might emancipate their genius from their neces- 
sities ! 

We see Rousseau rushing out of the palace of the finan- 
cier, selling his watch, copying music by the sheet, and by 
the mechanical industry of two hours, purchasing ten for 
genius. We may smile at the enthusiasm of young Barry, 
who finding himself too constant a haunter of taverns, ima- 
gined that this expenditure of time was occasioned by having 
money ; and to put an end to the conflict, he threw the little 
he possessed at once into the Liffey ; but let us not forget 



190 Literary Character. 

that Babby, in the maturity of life, confidently began a 
labour of years,* and one of the noblest inventions in his art 
— a great poem in a picture — with no other resource than 
what he found by secret labours through the night, in fur- 
nishing the shops with those slight and saleable sketches 
which secured uninterrupted mornings for his genius. Spi- 
]srosA, a name as celebrated, and perhaps as calumniated, as 
Epicurus, lived in all sorts of abstinence, even of honours, of 
pensions, and of presents ; which, however disguised by kind- 
ness, he would not accept, so fearful was this philosopher of a 
chain ! Lodging in a cottage, and obtaining a livelihood by 
polishing optical glasses, he declared he had never spent more 
than he earned, and certainly thought there was such a thing 
as superfluous earnings. At his death, his small accounts 
showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a-day, and 

Enjoy' d, spare feast ! a radish and an egg. 

Poussitf persisted in refusing a higher price than that 
affixed to the back of his pictures, at the time he was living 
without a domestic. The great oriental scholar, Anquetil 
de Pebbon, is a recent example of the literary character 
carrying his indifference to privations to the very cynicism, 
of poverty ; and he seems to exult over his destitution with 
the same pride as others would expatiate over their posses- 
sions. Yet we must not forget, to use the words of Lord 
Bacon, that "judging that means were to be spent upon 
learning, and not learning to be applied to means," De Peb- 
bon" refused the offer of thirty thousand livres for his copy 
of the " Zend-avesta." Writing to some Bramins, he de- 
scribes his life at Paris to be much like their own. " I sub- 
sist on the produce of my literary labours without revenue, 
establishment, or place. I have no wife nor children ; alone, 
absolutely free, but always the friend of men of probity. In 
a perpetual war with my senses, I triumph over the attrac- 
tions of the world or I contemn them." 

This ascetic existence is not singular. Pabike, a great 
modern poet of Italy, whom the Milanese point out to 
strangers as the glory of their city, lived in the same state 
of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhouse has given us this 
self-portrait of the poet : — 

* His series of pictures for the walls of the meeting-room of the Society 
of Arts in the Adelphi. — Ed. 



Literary Poverty. 191 

Me, non nato a percotere 
Le dure illustri porte, 
Nudo accorra, ma libero 
II regno della morte. 

Naked, but free ! A life of hard deprivations was long 
that of the illustrious Linketts. Without fortune, to that 
great mind it never seemed necessary to acquire any. Peri- 
grinating on foot with a stylus, a magnifying-glass, and a 
basket for plants, he shared the rustic meal of the peasant. 
Never was glory obtained at a cheaper rate ! exclaims one of 
his eulogists. Satisfied with the least of the little, he only 
felt one perpetual want — that of completing his Flors. 
Not that LiisnoETJS was insensible to his situation, for he 
gave his name to a little flower in Lapland — the Linncea 
JBorealis, from the fanciful analogy he discovered between its 
character and his own early fate, " a little northern plant 
flowering early, depressed, abject, and long overlooked." 
The want of fortune, however, did not deprive this man of 
genius of his true glory, nor of that statue raised to him in 
the gardens of the University of Upsal, nor of that solemn 
eulogy delivered by a crowned head, nor of those medals 
which his nation struck to commemorate the genius of the 
three kingdoms of nature ! 

This, then, is the race who have often smiled at the light 
regard of their good neighbours when contrasted with their 
own celebrity ; for in poverty and in solitude such men are 
not separated from their fame ; that is ever proceeding, ever 
raising a secret, but constant, triumph in their minds.* 

Yes ! Genius, undegraded and unexhausted, may indeed 
even in a garret glow in its career ; but it must be on the 
principle which induced Rousseau solemnly to renounce 
writing " par metier." This in the Journal de Sgavans he 
once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to " the 
profession." f I n a garret, the author of the " Studies of 
Nature," as he exultingly tells us, arranged his work. " It 
was in a little garret, in the new street of St. Etienne du 
Mont, where I resided four years, in the midst of physical 

* Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his ability the 
notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his palace ; but 
the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to bis industry and inde- 
pendence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of labour. — Ed. 

f Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi. p. 283 ; 
vol. xxxii. p. 90. 



192 Literary Character. 

and domestic afflictions. But there I enjoyed the most ex- 
quisite pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an 
enchanting horizon. There I put the finishing hand to my 
' Studies of Nature,' and there I published them." Pope, 
one day taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, 
desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three pair 
of stairs into a small room, Pope said, " In this garret Addi- 
son wrote his 'Campaign!'" To the feelings of the poet 
this garret had become a consecrated spot ; Genius seemed 
more itself, placed in contrast with its miserable locality ! 

The man of genius wrestling with oppressive fortune, who 
follows the avocations of an author as a precarious source of 
existence, should take as the model of the authorial life, that 
of Dr. Johnson. The dignity of the literary character was 
as deeply associated with his feelings, and the " reverence 
thyself" as present to his mind, when doomed to be one of 
the Helots of literature, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as 
when, in the honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy 
adulation of the lordly Chesterfield. Destitute of this enno- 
bling principle, the author sinks into the tribe of those rabid 
adventurers of the pen who have masked the degraded form 
of the literary character under the assumed title of " authors 
by profession"* — the Gttthries, the Kalphs, and the Am- 
HTJKSTS.t " There are worse evils for the literary man," 
says a living author, who himself is the true model of the 
great literary character, " than neglect, poverty, imprison- 
ment, and death. There are even more pitiable objects than 
Chatterton himself with the poison at his lips." " I should 
die with hunger were I at peace with the world !" exclaimed 
a corsair of literature — and dashed his pen into the black 
flood before him of soot and gall. 

In substituting fortune for the object of his designs, the 
man of genius deprives himself of those heats of inspiration 
reserved for him who lives for himself; the mollia tempora 
fandi of Art. If he be subservient to the public taste, with- 
out daring to raise it to his own, the creature of his times has 
not the choice of his subjects, which choice is itself a sort of 
invention. A task-worker ceases to think his own thoughts. 

* From an original letter which I have published from Guthrie to a 
minister of state, this modern phrase appears to have been his own inven- 
tion. The principle unblushingly avowed, required the sanction of a re- 
spectable designation. I have preserved it in "Calamities of Authors." 

t For some account of these men, see "Calamities of Authors." 



Influence of Necessity. 193 

The stipulated price and time are weighing on his pen or his 
pencil, while the hour-glass is dropping its hasty sands. If 
the man of genius would be wealthy and even luxurious, 
another fever besides the thirst of glory torments him. Such 
insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in fear is a 
mind in slavery. In one of Shakspeare's sonnets he 
pathetically laments this compulsion of his necessities which 
forced him to the trade of pleasing the public ; and he illus- 
trates this degradation by a novel image. " Chide Fortune," 
cries the bard, — 

The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, 

That did not better for my life provide 

Than public means which public manners breeds ; 

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 

Such is the fate of that author, who, in his variety of task- 
works, blue, yellow, and red, lives without ever having shown 
his own natural complexion. We hear the eloquent truth 
from one who has alike shared in the bliss of composition, 
and the misery of its " daily bread." " A single hour of com- 
position won from the business of the day, is worth more 
than the whole day's toil of him who works at the trade of 
literature : in the one case, the spirit comes joyfully to re- 
fresh itself, like a hart to the waterbrooks ; in the other, it 
pursues its miserable way, panting and jaded, with the dogs of 
hunger and necessity behind."* We trace the fate of all task- 
work in the history of Pousses', when called on to reside at 
the French court. Labouring without intermission, some- 
times on one thing and sometimes on another, and hurried 
on in things which required both time and thought, he saw 
too clearly the fatal tendency of such a life, and exclaimed, 
with ill-suppressed bitterness, " If I stay long in this country, 
I shall turn dauber like the rest here." The great artist 
abruptly returned to Rome to regain the possession of his 
own thoughts. 

It has been a question with some, more indeed abroad than 
at home, whether the art of instructing mankind by the press 
would not be less suspicious in its character, were it less in- 
terested in one of its prevalent motives ? Some noble self- 
denials of this kind are recorded. The principle of emolument 

* Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 538. 



194 Literary Character. 

will produce the industry which furnishes works for popular 
demand ; but it is only the principle of honour which can 
produce the lasting works of genius. Boileatj seems to cen- 
sure Racine for having accepted money for one of his dramas, 
while he, who was not rich, gave away his polished poems to 
the public. He seems desirous of raising the art of writing 
to a more disinterested profession than any other, requiring no 
fees for the professors. Olivet presented his elaborate edi- 
tion of Cicero to the world, requiring no other remuneration 
than its glory. Milton did not compose his immortal work 
for his trivial copyright ;* and Linnaeus sold his labours for 
a single ducat, The Abbe Mablv, the author of many poli- 
tical and moral works, lived on little, and would accept only a 
few presentation copies from the booksellers. But, since we 
have become a nation of book-collectors, and since there 
exists, as Mr. Coleridge describes it, " a reading public," this 
principle of honour is altered. Wealthy and even noble 
authors are proud to receive the largest tribute to their genius, 
because this tribute is the certain evidence of the number 
who pay it. The property of a book, therefore, represents to 
the literary candidate the collective force of the thousands of 
voters on whose favour his claims can only exist. This change 
in the affairs of the literary republic in our country was 
felt by Gibbon, who has fixed on "the patronage of book- 
sellers" as the standard of public opinion: "the measure of their 
liberality," he says, "is the least ambiguous test of our com- 
mon success." The philosopher accepted it as a substitute 
for that " friendship or favour of princes, of which he could 
not boast." The same opinion was held by Johnson. Yet, 
looking on the present state of English literature, the most 
profuse perhaps in Europe, we cannot refrain from thinking 
that the "patronage of booksellers" is frequently injurious 
to the great interests of literature. 

The dealers in enormous speculative purchases are only 
subservient to the spirit of the times. If they are the pur- 
veyors, they are also the panders of public taste ; and their 
vaunted patronage only extends to popular subjects ; while 

* The agreement made with. Simmons, the publisher, was 51. down, and 
51. more when 1500 copies were sold, the same sum to be paid for the 
second and third editions, each of the same number of copies. Milton only- 
lived during the publication of two editions, and his widow parted with 
all her right in the work to the same bookseller for eight pounds. Her 
autograph receipt was in the possession of the late Dawson Turner. — Ed. 



Booksellers' Patronage. 195 

their urgent demands are sure to produce hast y manufactures. 
A precious work on a recondite subject, which may have con- 
sumed the life of its author, no bookseller can patronise ; and 
whenever such a work is published, the author has rarely sur- 
vived the long season of the public's neglect. While popular 
works, after some few years of celebrity, have at length been 
discovered not worth the repairs nor the renewal of their lease 
of fame, the neglected work of a nobler design rises in value 
and rarity. The literary work which requires the greatest 
skill and difficulty, and the longest labour, is not commercially 
valued with that hasty, spurious novelty, for which the taste 
of the public is craving, from the strength of its disease rather 
than of its appetite. Rousseau observed, that his musical 
opera, the work of five or six weeks, brought him as much 
money as he had received for his "Emile," which had cost 
him twenty years of meditation, and three years of composi- 
tion. This single fact represents a hundred. So fallacious 
are public opinion and the patronage of booksellers ! 

Such, then, is the inadequate remuneration of a life devoted 
to literature ; and notwithstanding the more general interest 
excited by its productions within the last century, it has not 
essentially altered their situation in society ; for who is de- 
ceived by the trivial exultation of the gay sparkling scribbler 
who lately assured us that authors now dip their pens in 
silver ink-standishes, and have a valet for an amanuensis ? 
Fashionable writers must necessarily get out of fashion ; it is 
the inevitable fate of the material and the manufacturer. An 
eleemosynary fund can provide no permanent relief for the 
age and sorrows of the unhappy men of science and litera- 
ture ; and an author may even have composed a work which 
shall be read by the next generation as well as the present, 
and still be left in a state even of pauperism. These victims 
perish in silence ! No one has attempted to suggest even a 
palliative for this great evil ; and when I asked the greatest 
genius of our age to propose some relief for this general suffer- 
ing, a sad and convulsive nod, a shrug that sympathised with 
the misery of so many brothers, and an avowal that even he 
could not invent one, was all that genius had to alleviate the 
forlorn state of the literary character.* 

The only man of genius who has thrown out a hint for 

* It was the late Sir Walter Scott — if I could assign the date of this 
conversation, it would throw some light on what might be then passing in 
his own mind. 

o 2 



196 Literary Character. 

improving the situation of the literary man is Adam Smith. 
In that passage in bis " Wealth of Nations" to which I 
have already referred, he says, that " Before the invention of 
the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of 
letters could make anything by his talents was that of a 
public or a private teacher, or by communicating to other 
people the various and useful knowledge which he had 
acquired himself; and this surely is a more honourable, a 
more useful, and in general even a more profitable employ- 
ment than that other of writing for a bookseller, to which 
the art of printing has given occasion." We see the political 
economist, alike insensible to the dignity of the literary 
character, incapable of taking a just view of its glorious 
avocation. To obviate the personal w^ants attached to the 
occupations of an author, he would, more effectually than 
skilfully, get rid of authorship itself. This is not to restore 
the limb, but to amputate it. It is not the preservation of 
existence, but its annihilation. His friends Hume and 
Robertson must have turned from this page humiliated and 
indignant. They could have supplied Adam Smith with a 
truer conception of the literary character, of its independence, 
its influence, and its glory. 

I have projected a plan for the alleviation of the state of 
these authors who are not blessed with a patrimony. The 
trade connected with literature is carried on by men who are 
usually not literate, and the generality of the publishers of 
books, unlike all other tradesmen, are often the worst judges 
of their own wares. Were it practicable, as I believe it to be, 
that authors and men of letters could themselves be book- 
sellers, the public would derive this immediate benefit from 
the scheme ; a deluge of worthless or- indifferent books would 
be turned away, and the name of the literary publisher would 
be a pledge for the value of every new book. Every literary 
man would choose his own favourite department, and we 
should learn from him as well as from his books. 

Against this project it may be urged, that literary men are 
ill adapted to attend to the regular details of trade, and that 
the great capitalists in the book business have not been men 
of literature. But this plan is not suggested for accumulating 
a great fortune, or for the purpose of raising up a new class of 
tradesmen. It is not designed to make authors wealthy, for 
that would inevitably extinguish great literary exertion, but 
only to make them independent, as the best means to preserve 



Literary Booksellers. 197 

exertion. The details of trade are not even to reach him. The 
poet G-E sister, a bookseller, left his librairie to the care of his 
admirable wife. His own works, the elegant editions which 
issued from his press, and the value of manuscripts, were the 
objects of his attention. 

On the Continent many of the dealers in books have been 
literary men. At the memorable expulsion of the French 
Protestants on the edict of Nantes, their expatriated literary 
men flew to the shores of England, and the free provinces of 
Holland ; and it was in Holland that this colony of littera- 
teurs established magnificent printing-houses, and furnished 
Europe with editions of the native writers of France, often 
preferable to the originals, and even wrote the best works of that 
time. At that memorable period in our own history, when 
two thousand nonconformists were ejected on St. Bartholo- 
mew's day from the national establishment, the greater part 
were men of learning, who, deprived of their livings, were 
destitute of any means of existence. These scholars were 
compelled to look to some profitable occupation, and for. the 
greater part they fixed on trades connected with literature ; 
some became eminent booksellers, and continued to be volu- 
minous writers, without finding their studies interrupted by 
their commercial arrangements. The details of trade must 
be left to others ; the hand of a child can turn a vast machine, 
and the object here proposed would be lost, if authors sought 
to become merely booksellers. 

Whenever the public of Europe shall witness such a new 
order of men among their booksellers, they will have less to 
read, but more to remember. Their opinions will be less 
fluctuating, and their knowledge will come to them with more 
maturity. Men of letters will fly to the house of the book- 
seller who in that class of literature in which he deals, will 
himself be not the least eminent member. 



198 Literary Character. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The matrimonial state of literature. — Matrimony said not to be well suited 
to the domestic life of genius. — Celibacy a concealed cause of the early 
querulousness of men of genius. — Of unhappy unions.— Not absolutely 
necessary that the wife should be a literary woman. — Of the docility and 
susceptibility of the higher female character. — A picture of a literary 
wife. 

Matrimony has often been considered as a condition not well 
suited to the domestic life of genius, accompanied as it must 
be by many embarrassments for the head and the heart. It 
was an axiom with Fuessli, the Swiss artist, that the marriage 
state is incompatible with a high cultivation of the fine arts ; 
and such appears to have been the feeling of most artists. 
When Michael Angelo was asked why he did not marry, 
he replied, " I have espoused my art ; and it occasions me 
sufficient domestic cares, for my works shall be my children. 
What would Bartholomeo Ghiberti have been, had he not 
made the gates of St. John? His children consumed his 
fortune, but his gates, worthy to be the gates of Paradise, 
remain." The three Caraccis refused the conjugal bond on the 
same principle, dreading the interruptions of domestic life. 
Their crayons and paper were always on their dining-table. 
Careless of fortune, they determined never to hurry over their 
works in order that they might supply the ceaseless demands 
of a family. We discover the same principle operating in 
our own times. When a young painter, who had just married, 
told Sir Joshua that he was preparing to pursue his studies in 
Italy, that great painter exclaimed, " Married ! then you are 
ruined as an artist !" 

The same principle has influenced literary men. Sir 
Thomas Bodlet had a smart altercation with his first libra- 
rian, insisting that he should not marry, maintaining its 
absurdity in the man who had the perpetual care of a public 
library ; and Woodward left as one of the express conditions 
of his lecturer, that he was not to be a married man. They 
imagined that their private affairs would interfere with their 
public duties. Peiresc, the great French collector, refused 
marriage, convinced that the cares of a family were too 
absorbing for the freedom necessary to literary pursuits, and 
claimed likewise a sacrifice of fortune incompatible with his 
great designs. Boyle, who would not suffer his studies to 



Celibacy. 199 

be interrupted by " household affairs," lived as a boarder with 
his sister, Lady Ranelagh. Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, Bayle, 
and Hobbes, and Hume, and Gibbon, and Adam Smith, 
decided for celibacy. These great authors placed their happi- 
ness in their celebrity. 

This debate, for the present topic has sometimes warmed 
into one, is in truth ill adapted for controversy. The heart 
is more concerned in its issue than any espoused doctrine 
terminating in partial views. Look into the domestic annals 
of genius — observe the variety of positions into which the 
literary character is thrown in the nuptial state. Cynicism 
will not always obtain a sullen triumph, nor prudence always 
be allowed to calculate away some of the richer feelings of 
our nature. It is not an axiom that literary characters must 
necessarily institute a new order of celibacy. The sentence of 
the apostle pronounces that " the forbidding to marry is a 
doctrine of devils." Wesley, who published "Thoughts on 
a Single Life," advised some " to remain single for the king- 
dom of heaven's sake ; but the precept," he adds, "is not for 
the many." So indecisive have been the opinions of the most 
curious inquirers concerning the matrimonial state, whenever 
a great destination has engaged their consideration. 

One position we may assume, that the studies, and even the 
happiness of the pursuits of men of genius, are powerfully 
influenced by the domestic associate of their lives. 

They rarely pass through the age of love without its 
passion. Even their Delias and their Amandas are often the 
shadows of some real object; for as Shakspeare's experience 
told him, 

Never durst poet touch a peu to write, 
Until his ink were temper 'd with love's sighs. 

Their imagination is perpetually colouring those pictures of 
domestic happiness on which they delight to dwell. He who 
is no husband sighs for that tenderness which is at once be- 
stowed and received ; and tears will start in the eyes of him 
who, in becoming a child among children, yet feels that he is 
no father ! These deprivations have usually been the concealed 
cause of the querulous melancholy of the literary character. 
Such was the real occasion of ShejStstois'e's unhappiness. 
In early life he had been captivated by a young lady adapted 
to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, and their mu- 
tual sensibility lasted for some years. It lasted until she 
died. It was in parting from her that he first sketched his 



200 Literary Character. 

" Pastoral Ballad." Shenstone had the fortitude to refuse 
marriage. His spirit could not endure that she should par- 
ticipate in that life of self-privations to which he was doomed ; 
but his heart was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his 
plaintive love songs and elegies flowed from no fictitious 
source. " It is long since," said he, " I have considered my- 
self as undone. The world will not perhaps consider me in 
that light entirely till I have married my maid."* 

Thomson met a reciprocal passion in his Amanda, while 
the full tenderness of his heart was ever wasting itself like 
waters in a desert. As we have been made little acquainted 
with this part of the history of the poet of the "Seasons," 
I shall give his own description of those deep feelings from a 
manuscript letter written to Mallet. " To turn my eyes a 
softer way, to you know who — absence sighs it to me. What 
is my heart made of ? a soft system of low nerves, too sensi- 
ble for my quiet — capable of being very happy or very un- 
happy, I am afraid the last will prevail. Lay your hand upon 
a kindred heart, and despise me not. I know not what it is, 
but she dwells upon my thought in a mingled sentiment, 
which is the sweetest, the most intimately pleasing the soul 
can receive, and which I would wish never to want towards 
some dear object or another. To have always some secret 
darling idea to which one can still have recourse amidst the 
noise and nonsense of the world, and which never fails to 
touch us in the most exquisite manner, is an art of happiness 
that fortune cannot deprive us of. This may be called 
romantic ; but whatever the cause is, the effect is really felt. 
Pray, when you write, tell me when you saw her, and with 
the pure eye of a friend, when you see her again, whisper that 
I am her most humble servant." 

Even Pope was enamoured of a "scornful lady ;" and, as 
Johnson observed, "polluted his will with female resentment." 
Johnson himself, we are told by one who knew him, " had 
always a metaphysical passion for one princess or other, — the 
rustic Lucy Porter, or the haughty Molly Aston, or the 
sublimated methodisticHill Boothby ; and, lastly, the more 
charming Mrs. Thrale." Even in his advanced age, at the 
height of his celebrity, we hear his cries of lonely wretched- 
ness. " I want every comfort ; my life is very solitary and 
very cheerless. Let me know that I have yet a friend — let 

* The melancholy tale of Shenstone's life is narrated in the third volume 
of " Curiosities of Literature." — Ed. 



Celibacy. 201 

us be kind to one another." But the " kindness " of distant 
friends is like the polar sun — too far removed to warm us. 
Those who have eluded the individual tenderness of the 
female, are tortured by an aching void in their feelings. The 
stoic Akenside, in his " Odes," has preserved the history of 
a life of genius in a series of his own feelings. One entitled, 
"At Study," closes with these memorable lines: — ■ 

Me though no peculiar fair 
Touches with a lover's care ; 

Though the pride of my desire 
Asks immortal friendship's name, 
Asks the palm of honest fame 

And the old heroic lyre ; 
Though the day have smoothly gone, 
Or to letter'd leisure known, 

Or in social duty spent ; 
Yet at the eve my lonely breast 
Seeks in vain for perfect rest, 

Languishes for true content. 

If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and excite- 
ment which might raise him above the atmosphere of social 
love, it was assuredly the enthusiast, Thomas Hollis, who, 
solely devoted to literature and to republicanism, was occupied 
in furnishing Europe and America with editions of his favour- 
ite authors. He would not many, lest marriage should inter- 
rupt the labours of his platonic politics. But his extraordi- 
nary memoirs, while they show an intrepid mind in a robust 
frame, bear witness to the self-tormentor who had trodden 
down the natural bonds of domestic life. Hence the deep 
" dejection of his spirits;" those incessant cries, that he has 
" no one to advise, assist, or cherish those magnanimous pur- 
suits in him." At length he retreated into the country, in 
utter hopelessness. " I go not into the country for attentions 
to agriculture as such, nor attentions of interest of any kind, 
which I have ever despised as such ; but as a used man, to 
pass the remainder of a life in tolerable sanity and quiet, after 
having given up the flower of it, voluntarily, day, week, 
month, year after year, successive to each other, to public 
service, and being no longer able to sustain, in body or mind, 
the labours that I have chosen to go through without falling 
speedily into the greatest disorders, and it might be im- 
becility itself. This is not colouring, but the exact plain 
truth." 



202 Literary Character. 

Poor moralist, and what art thou ? 
A solitary fly ! 

Thy joys no glittering female meets, 
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets. 

Assuredly it would not have been a question whether 
these literary characters should have married, had not Mon- 
taigne, when a widower, declared that "he would not 
marry a second time, though it were Wisdom itself;" but the 
airy Gascon has not disclosed how far Madame was con- 
cerned in this anathema. 

If the literary man unite himself to a woman whose taste 
and whose temper are adverse to his pursuits, he must cou- 
rageously prepare for a martyrdom. Should a female mathe- 
matician be united to a poet, it is probable that she would be 
left amidst her abstractions, to demonstrate to herself how 
many a specious diagram fails when brought into its mecha- 
nical operation ; or discovering the infinite varieties of a 
curve, she might take occasion to deduce her husband's ver- 
satility. If she become as jealous of his books as other wives 
might be of his mistresses, she may act the virago even over 
his innocent papers. The wife of Bishop Cooper, while her 
husband was employed on his Lexicon, one day consigned the 
volume of many 3'ears to the flames, and obliged that scholar 
to begin a second siege of Troy in a second Lexicon. The 
wife of Whitelocke often destroyed his MSS., and the 
marks of her nails have come down to posterity in the 
numerous lacerations still gaping in his " Memorials." The 
learned Sir Henry Saville, who devoted more than half 
his life and nearly ten thousand pounds to his magnificent 
edition of St. Chrysostom, led a very uneasy life between the 
saint and her ladyship. What with her tenderness for him, 
and her own want of amusement, Saint Chrysostom, it ap- 
pears, incurred more than one danger. 

Grenius has not preserved itself from the errors and infir- 
mities of matrimonial connexions. The energetic character 
of Dante could neither soften nor control the asperity of his 
lady ; and when that great poet lived in exile, she never cared 
to see him more, though he was the father of her six chil- 
dren. The internal state of the house of Domenichino 
afflicted that great artist with many sorrows. He had mar- 
ried a beauty of high birth and extreme haughtiness, and of 
the most avaricious disposition. When at Naples he himself 
dreaded lest the avaricious passion of his wife should not be 



able to resist the offers she received to poison him. and he 
was compelled to provide and dress his ovrn food. It is be- 
lieved that he died of poison. "What a picture has Passeri 
left of the domestic interior of this great artist ! I ~.':s-i fra 
mille crepacuori mori uno de* piu eccellenti artefici del 
mundo; che oltre al suo talore pittoi"ico avrebbe piu (Fogni 
altri maritato di civer sempre per Tonesta personale. K Sc 
perished, amidst a thousand heart-breaking's, the most exc - 
lent of artists ; wiu besides his worth as a painter, leserred 
as mnch as any one to have lived for his excellence as a 
man." 

Milt 05" carried nothing of the greatness of his mind in 
the choice of his wives. His first wile was the object of 
sudden fancy. He left the metropolis, and unexpected!" re- 
tained a married man, and united to a woman of such un- 
congenial dispositions, that the romp was frightened at the 
literary habits of the great poet, found his house solitary, 
beat his nephews, and ran away after a single month's resi- 
dence ! To this circumstance we owe his fam : as r_ ise on 
Divorce; and a party no means extinct), who having 

made as ill choices in their wives, were for divorcing as fast 
ey had been for marrying, calling themselves Milton 
"When we find that Mollxhe, so skilful in human life, 
married a girl from his own troop, who made him experience 
all those bitter disgusts and ridiculous embarrassments which 
he himself played off at the theatre: that Addison's fine 
taste in morals and in life could suffer the ambition of a 
courtier to prevail with himself to seek a countess, whom he 
describes under the stormy character of Oceana, and who 
drove him contemptuously into solitude, and shortened his 
days ; and that Steele, warm and thoughtless, was united to 
a cold precise u Aliss Prue," as he himself calls her, and from 
whom he never parted without bickerings ; in all these :: - as 
we censure the great men, not their wives.* Rousseau has 
honestly confessed his error. He had united himseli : low, 
illiterate woman : and when he retreated into solitude, he felt 
the weight which he carried with him. He laments that he 
had not educated his wife: "In a docile age, 1 ;•; uld have 
adorned her mind with talents and knowledge, which would 
have more closely united us in retirement. We should not 
then have felt the intolerable tedium of a tete-a-tete ; it is in 

* See " Curiosities of literature," for anecdotes of "Literary Wives." 



204 Literary Character. 

solitude one feels the advantage of living with another who 
can think." Thus Rousseau confesses the fatal error, and 
indicates the right principle. 

Yet it seems not absolutely necessary for the domestic 
happiness of the literary character, that his wife should be a 
literary woman. Tycho Brahe, noble by birth as well as 
genius, married the daughter of a peasant. By which means 
that great man obtained two points essential for his abstract 
pursuits ; he acquired an obedient wife, and freed himself of 
his noble relatives, who would no longer hold an intercourse 
with the man who was spreading their family honours into 
more ages than perhaps they could have traced them back- 
wards. The lady of Wieland was a pleasing domestic per- 
son, who, without reading her husband's works, knew he 
was a great poet. Wieland was apt to exercise his imagina- 
tion in declamatory invectives and bitter amplifications ; and 
the writer of this account, in perfect German taste, assures 
us, " that many of his felicities of diction were thus struck 
out at a heat." During this frequent operation of his 
genius, the placable temper of Mrs. Wieland overcame the 
orgasm of the German bard, merely by persisting in her ad- 
miration and her patience. When the burst was over, Wie- 
land himself was so charmed by her docility, that he usually 
closed with giving up all his opinions. 

There is another sort of homely happiness, aptly described 
in the plain words of Bishop Newton. He found "the 
study of sacred and classic authors ill agreed with butchers' 
and bakers' bills;" and when the prospect of a bishopric 
opened on him, " more servants, more entertainments, a 
better table, &c," it became necessary to look out for " some 
clever, sensible woman to be his wife, who would lay out his 
money to the best advantage, and be careful and tender of 
his health ; a friend and companion at all hours, and who 
would be happier in staying at home than be perpetually 
gadding abroad." Such are the wives not adapted to be the 
votaries, but who may be the faithful companions through 
life, even of a man of genius. 

But in the character of the higher female we may discover 
a constitutional faculty of docility and enthusiasm which has 
varied with the genius of different ages. It is the opinion of 
an elegant metaphysician, that the mind of the female adopts 
and familiarises itself with ideas more easily than that of 
man, and hence the facility with which the sex contract or 



Unhappy Unions. 205 

lose habits, and accommodate their minds to new situations. 
Politics, war, and learning, are equally objects of attainment 
to their delightful susceptibility. Love has the fancied tran- 
sparency of the cameleon. When the art of government di- 
rected the feelings of a woman, we behold Aspasia, eloquent 
with the genius of Pericles, instructing the Archons ; 
Portia, the wife of the republican Brutus, devouring burning 
coals ; and the wife of Lucan, transcribing and correcting the 
Pharsalia, before the bust of the poet, which she had placed 
on her bed, that his very figure might never be absent. 
When universities were opened to the sex, they acquired 
academic glory. The wives of military men have shared in 
the perils of the field ; or like Anna Comnena and our Mrs. 
Hutchinson, have become even their historians. In the age 
of love and sympathy, the female often receives an indelible 
pliancy from her literary associate. His pursuits become the 
objects of her thoughts, and he observes his own taste re- 
flected in his family ; much less through his own influence, 
for his solitary labours often preclude him from forming 
them, than by that image of his own genius — the mother of 
his children ! The subjects, the very books which enter into 
his literary occupation, are cherished by her imagination ; a 
feeling finely opened by the lady of the author of " Sandford 
and Merton :" " My ideas of my husband," she said, " are so 
much associated with his books, that to part with them 
would be as it were breaking some of the last ties which 
still connect me with so beloved an object. The being in the 
midst of books he has been accustomed to read, and which 
contain his marks and notes, will still give him a sort of exis- 
tence with me. Unintelligible as such fond chimeras may ap- 
pear to many people, I am persuaded they are not so to you." 
With what simplicity Meta Mollers, the wife of Klop- 
stock, in her German-English, describes to Richardson, the 
novelist, the manner in which she passes her day with her 
poet ! she tells him that " she is always present at the birth 
of the young verses, which begin by fragments, here and 
there, of a subject with which his soul is just then filled. 
Persons who live as we do have no need of two chambers ; 
we are always in the same : I with my little work, still ! 
still ! only regarding sometimes my husband's face, which is 
so venerable at that time with tears of devotion, and all the 
sublimity of the subject — my husband reading me his young 
verses, and suffering my criticisms." 



206 Literary Character. 

The picture of a literary wife of antiquity has descended 
to us, touched by the domestic pencil of genius, in the sus- 
ceptible Calphttrnia, the lady of the younger Pliny. 
"Her affection for me," he says, "has given her a turn to 
books : her passion will increase with our days, for it is not 
my youth or my person, which time gradually impairs, but 
my reputation and my glory, of which she is enamoured." 

I have been told that Bueeon, notwithstanding his 
favourite seclusion of his old tower in his garden, acknow- 
ledged to a friend that his lady had a considerable influence 
over his compositions : " Often," said he, " when I cannot 
please myself, and am impatient at the disappointment, 
Madame de Buffon reanimates my exertion, or withdraws me 
to repose for a short interval ; I return to my pen refreshed, 
and aided by her advice." 

Gesner declared that whatever were his talents, the 
person who had most contributed to develope them was his 
wife. She is unknown to the public ; but the history of the 
mind of such a woman is discovered in the " Letters of 
Gesner and his Family." While Gesner gave himself up 
entirely to his favourite arts, drawing, painting, etching, and 
poetry, his wife would often reanimate a genius that was apt 
to despond in its attempts, and often exciting him to new 
productions, her sure and delicate taste was attentively con- 
sulted by the poet-painter — but she combined the most prac- 
tical good sense with the most feeling imagination. This 
forms the rareness of the character ; for this same woman, 
who united with her husband in the education of their 
children, to relieve him from the interruptions of common 
business, carried on alone the concerns of his house in la 
librairie* Her correspondence with her son, a young artist 
travelling for his studies, opens what an old poet comprehen- 
sively terms " a gathered mind." Imagine a woman attend- 
ing to the domestic economy, and to the commercial details, 
yet withdrawing out of this business of life into the more 
elevated pursuits of her husband, and at the same time com- 
bining with all this the cares and counsels which she bestowed 
on her son to form the artist and the man. 

* Gesner' s father was a bookseller of Zurich. ; descended from a family 
of men learned in the exact sciences, he was apprenticed to a bookseller 
at Berlin, and afterwards entered into his father's business. The best 
edition of his " Idylls" is that published by himself, in two volumes, 4to, 
illustrated by his own engravings. — Ed. 



Gesner's Wife. 207 

To know this incomparable woman we must hear her. 
" Consider your father's precepts as oracles of wisdom ; they 
are the result of the experience he has collected, not only of 
life, hut of that art which he has acquired simply by his own 
industry." She would not have her son suffer his strong 
affection to herself to absorb all other sentiments. " Had 
you remained at home, and been habituated under your 
mother's auspices to employments merely domestic, what ad- 
vantage would you have acquired ? I own we should have 
passed some delightful winter evenings together ; but your 
love for the arts, and my ambition to see my sons as much 
distinguished for their talents as their virtues, would have 
been a constant source of regret at your passing your time in 
a manner so little worthy of you." 

How profound is her observation on the strong but con- 
fined attachments of a youth of genius ! "I have frequently 
remarked, with some regret, the excessive attachment you in- 
dulge towards those who see and feel as you do yourself, and 
the total neglect with which you seem to treat every one else. 
I should reproach a man with such a fault who was destined 
to pass his life in a small and unvarying circle ; but in an 
artist, who has a great object in view, and whose country is 
the whole world, this disposition seems to be likely to pro- 
duce a great number of inconveniences. Alas ! my son, the 
life you have hitherto led in your father's house has been in 
fact a pastoral life, and not such a one as was necessary for 
the education of a man whose destiny summons him to the 
world." 

And when her son, after meditating on some of the most 
glorious productions of art, felt himself, as he says, " dis- 
heartened and cast down at the unattainable superiority of 
the artist, and that it was only by reflecting on the immense 
labour and continued efforts which such masterpieces must 
have required, that I regained my courage and my ardour," 
she observes, " This passage, my dear son, is to me as precious 
as gold, and I send it to you again, because I wish you to im- 
press it strongly on your mind. The remembrance of this 
may also be a useful preservative from too great confidence in 
your abilities, to which a warm imagination may sometimes 
be liable, or from the despondence you might occasionally feel 
from the contemplation of grand originals. Continue, there- 
fore, my dear son, to form a sound judgment and a pure taste 
from your own observations : your mind, while yet young and 



208 Literary Character. 

flexible, may receive whatever impressions you wish. Be 
careful that your abilities do not inspire in you too much 
confidence, lest it should happen to you as it has to many 
others, that they have never possessed any greater merit than 
that of having good abilities." 

One more extract, to preserve an incident which may touch 
the heart of genius. This extraordinary woman, whose cha- 
racteristic is that of strong sense combined with delicacy of 
feeling, would check her German sentimentality at the mo- 
ment she was betraying those emotions in which the imagi- 
nation is so powerfully mixed up with the associated feelings. 
Arriving at their cottage at Sihlwald, she proceeds — "On 
entering the parlour three small pictures, painted by you, met 
my eyes. I passed some time in contemplating them. It is 
now a year, I thought, since I saw him trace these pleasing 
forms ; he whistled and sang, and I saw them grow under his 
pencil ; now he is far, far from us. In short, I had the weak- 
ness to press my lips on one of these pictures. You well 
know, my dear son, that I am not much addicted to scenes of 
a sentimental turn ; but to-day, while I considered your works, 
I could not restrain this little impulse of maternal feelings. 
Do not, however, be apprehensive that the tender affection of 
a mother will ever lead me too far, or that I shall suffer my 
mind to be too powerfully impressed with the painful sensa- 
tions to which your absence gives birth. My reason con- 
vinces me that it is for your welfare that you are now in a 
place where your abilities will have opportunities of unfolding, 
and where you can become great in your art." 

Such was the incomparable wife and mother of the 
G-esnees ! Will it now be a question whether matrimony 
be incompatible with the cultivation of the arts ? A wife 
who reanimates the drooping genius of her husband, and a 
mother who is inspired by the ambition of beholding her sons 
eminent, is she not the real being which the ancients personi- 
fied in their Muse ? 



Literary Friendships. 209 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Literary friendships. — In early life. — Different from those of men of the 
world. — They suffer an unrestrained communication of their ideas, and 
bear reprimands and exhortations. — Unity of feelings. — A sympathy 
not of manners but of feelings. — Admit of dissimilar characters. — Their 
peculiar glory. — Their sorrow. 

Among the virtues which literature inspires, is often that of 
the most romantic friendship. The delirium of love, and even 
its lighter caprices, are incompatible with the pursuits of the 
student ; but to feel friendship like a passion is necessary to 
the mind of genius alternately elated and depressed, ever pro- 
digal of feeling and excursive in knowledge. 

The qualities which constitute literary friendship, compared 
with those of men of the world, must render it a sentiment as 
rare as love itself, which it resembles in that intellectual ten- 
derness in which both so deeply participate. 

Born " in the dews of their youth," this friendship will not 
expire on their tomb. In the school or the college this im- 
mortality begins ; and, engaged in similar studies, should even 
one excel the other, he will find in him the protector of his 
fame ; as Addison did in Steele, West in Gray, and Gray 
in Mason. Thus Petrarch was the guide of Boccaccio, 
thus Boccaccio became the defender of his master's genius. 
Perhaps friendship is never more intense than in an inter- 
course of minds of ready counsels and inspiring ardours. 
United in the same pursuits, but directed by an unequal ex- 
perience, the imperceptible superiority interests, without 
mortifying. It is a counsel, it is an aid ; in whatever form it 
shows itself, it has nothing of the malice of rivalry. 

A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men of 
genius offers itself in the history of Mignard, the great 
French painter, and Du Fresno y, the great critic of the art 
itself. Du" Fresnoy, abandoned in utter scorn by his stern 
father, an apothecary, for his entire devotion to his seductive 
art, lived at Rome in voluntary poverty, till Mignard, his 
old fellow-student, arrived, when they became known by the 
name of " the inseparables." The talents of the friends were 
different, but their studies were the same. Their days melted 
away together in drawing from the ancient statues and 
the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of paint- 
ings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of 

P 



210 Literary Character, 

Rome. One roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their 
sober meal. Light were the slumbers which closed each day, 
each the pleasing image of the former . But this remarkable 
friendship was not a simple sentiment which limited the views 
of " the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual source 
of mutual usefulness. They gave accounts to each other of 
whatever they observed, and carefully noted their own defects. 
Dtj Fresno y, so critical in the theory of the art, was unsuc- 
cessful in the practical parts. His delight in poetical com- 
position had retarded the progress of his pictorial powers. Not 
having been taught the handling of his pencil, he worked 
with difficulty ; but Migisiard succeeded in giving him a freer 
command and a more skilful touch ; while Du Fresnoy, who 
was the more literary man, enriched the invention of Migward 
by reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a passage 
from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the iEneid, or the Jerusalem 
Delivered, which offered subjects for the artist's invention, 
who would throw out five or six different sketches on the 
same subject ; a habit which so highly improved the inventive 
powers of Migward, that he could compose a fine picture 
with playful facility. Thus they lived together, mutually 
enlightening each other. Migknard supplied Dtj Fresnoy 
with all that fortune had refused him ; and, when he was no 
more, perpetuated his fame, which he felt was a portion of his 
own celebrity, by publishing his posthumous poem, De Arte 
Graphica ; # a poem, which Mason has made readable by his 
versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his invaluable 
commentary. 

In the poem Cowley composed, on the death of his friend 
Harvey, this stanza opens a pleasing scene of two young 
literary friends engaged in their midnight studies : 

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights ! 
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, 
Till the Ledsean stars, so famed for love, 
Wonder' d at us from above. 
We spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine ; 

But search of deep philosophy, 

Wit, eloquence, and poetry ; 
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. 

Touched by a personal knowledge of this union of genius 

* La Vie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbe de Monville, the work of an 
amateur. 



Literary Friendships. 21] 

and affection, even Malone commemorates, with unusual 
warmth, the literary friendships of Sir Joshua Keynolds ; and 
with a felicity of fancy, not often indulged, has raised an un- 
forced parallel between the bland wisdom of Sir Joshua and 
the " mitis sapientia Laeli." "What the illustrious Scipio 
was to Lselius was the all-knowing and all-accomplished 
Bueke to Keynolds ;" and what the elegant Laelius was to 
his master Pansetius, whom he gratefully protected, and to 
his companion the poet Lucilius, whom he patronised, was 
Reynolds to Johnson, of whom he was the scholar and 
friend, and to Goldsmith, whom he loved and aided.* 

Count Azaea mourns with equal tenderness and force over 
the memory of the artist and the writer Mengs. " The 
most tender friendship would call forth tears in this sad duty 
of scattering flowers on his tomb ; but the shade of my ex- 
tinct friend warns me not to be satisfied with dropping 
flowers and tears — they are useless ; and I would rather ac- 
complish his wishes, in making known the author and his 
works." 

I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communicated 
to me by one who had visited Gleim, the G-erman poet, who 
seems to have been a creature made up altogether of sensi- 
bility. His many and illustrious friends he had never for- 
gotten, and to the last hour of a life, prolonged beyond his 
eightieth year, he possessed those interior feelings which can 
make even an old man an enthusiast. There seemed for 
Gleim to be no extinction in friendship when the friend was 
no more ; and he had invented a singular mode of gratifying 
his feelings of literary friendships. The visitor found the 
old man in a room of which the wainscot was panelled, as we 
still see among us in ancient houses. In every panel Gleim 
had inserted the portrait of a friend, and the apartment was 
crowded. " You see," said the grey-haired poet, " that I 
never have lost a friend, and am sitting always among 
them." 

Such friendship can never be the lot of men of the world; 
for the source of these lies in the interior affections and the 
intellectual feelings. Fontenelle describes with character- 

* Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and his 
evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they compared 
notes ; and the President of the Eoyal Academy obtained that information 
which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, which his cease- 
less occupation could not else have allowed. — Ed. 

p2 



212 Literary Character. 

istic delicacy the conversations of such literary friends : " Our 
days passed like moments ; thanks to those pleasures, which, 
however, are not included in those which are commonly 
called pleasures." The friendships of the men of society 
move on the principle of personal interest, but interest can 
easily separate the interested ; or they are cherished to re- 
lieve themselves from the listlessness of existence ; but, as 
weariness is contagious, the contact of the propagator is 
watched. Men of the world may look on each other with 
the same countenances, but not with the same hearts. In 
the common mart of life intimacies may be found which ter- 
minate in complaint and contempt ; the more they know one 
another, the less is their mutual esteem : the feeble mind 
quarrels with one still more imbecile than itself ; the dis- 
solute riot with the dissolute, and they despise their compa- 
nions, while they too have themselves become despicable. 

Literary friendships are marked hj another peculiarity ; 
the true philosophical spirit has learned to bear that shock of 
contrary opinions which minds less meditative are unequal 
to encounter. Men of genius live in the unrestrained com- 
munication of their ideas, and confide even their caprices 
with a freedom which sometimes startles ordinary observers. 
We see literary men, the most opposite in dispositions and 
opinions, deriving from each other that fulness of knowledge 
which unfolds the certain, the probable, the doubtful. Topics 
which break the world into factions and sects, and truths 
which ordinary men are doomed only to hear from a malig- 
nant adversary, they gather from a friend ! If neither yields 
up his opinions to the other, they are at least certain of silence 
and a hearing ; but usually 

The wise new wisdom from the wise acquire. 

This generous freedom, which spares neither reprimands 
nor exhortation, has often occurred in the intercourse of lite- 
rary men. Htjme and Robertson" were engaged in the same 
studies, but with very opposite principles ; yet Robertson 
declined writing the English history, which he aspired to do, 
lest it should injure the plans of Hume ; a noble sacrifice ! 

Politics once divided Boccaccio and Petrarch. The poet 
of Valchiusa had never forgiven the Florentines for their 
persecution of his father. By the mediation of Boccaccio 
they now offered to reinstate Petrarch in his patrimony 
and his honours. Won over by the tender solicitude of his 



Petrarch and Boccaccio. 213 

friend, Peteaech had consented to return to his country ; 
but with his usual inconstancy of temper, he had again ex- 
cused himself to the senate of Florence, and again retreated 
to his solitude. Nor was this all ; for the Visconti of Milan 
had by their flattery and promises seduced Petraech to their 
court ; a court, the avowed enemy of Florence. Boccaccio, 
for the honour of literature, of his friend, of his country, 
indignantly heard of Peteaech's fatal decision, and ad- 
dressed him by a letter — the most interesting perhaps which 
ever passed between two literary friends, who were torn 
asunder by the momentary passions of the vulgar, but who 
were still united by that immortal friendship which litera- 
ture inspires, and by a reverence for that posterity which 
they knew would concern itself with their affairs. 

It was on a journey to Eavenna that Boccaccio first 
beard the news of Peteaech's abandonment of his country, 
when he thus vehemently addressed his brother-genius : — 

" I would be silent, but I cannot : my reverence commands 
silence, but my indignation speaks. How has it happened 
that Silvanus (under this name he conceals Petrarch) has 
forgotten his dignity, the many conversations we had toge- 
ther on the state of Italy, his hatred of the archbishop 
(Visconti}, his love of solitude and freedom, so necessary for 
study, and has resolved to imprison the Muses at that court? 
Whom may we trust again, if Silvanus, who once branded 
II Visconti as the Cruel, a Polyphemus, a Cyclop, has 
avowed himself his friend, and placed his neck under the 
yoke of him whose audacity, and pride, and tyranny, he so 
deeply abhorred ? How has Visconti obtained that which 
King Robert, which the pontiff, the emperor, the King of 
France, could not ? Am I to conclude that you accepted this 
favour from a disdain of your fellow-citizens, who once indeed 
scorned you, but who have reinstated you in the paternal 
patrimony of which you have been deprived ? I do not 
disapprove of a just indignation ; but I take Heaven to wit- 
ness that I believe that no man, whoever he may be, rightly 
and honestly can labour against his country, whatever be the 
injury he has received. You will gain nothing by opposing 
me in this opinion ; for if stirred up by the most just indig- 
nation you become the friend of the enemy of your country, 
unquestionably you will not spur him on to war, nor assist 
him by your arm, nor by your counsel ; yet how can you 
avoid rejoicing with him, when you hear of the ruins, the 



214 Literary Character. 

conflagrations, the imprisonments, death, and rapine, which 
he shall spread among us ?" 

Such was the bold appeal to elevated feelings, and such 
the keen reproach inspired by that confidential freedom 
which can only exist in the intercourse of great minds. The 
literary friendship, or rather adoration of Boccaccio for 
Petrarch, was not bartered at the cost of his patriotism : 
and it is worthy of our notice that Petrarch, whose per- 
sonal injuries from an ungenerous republic were rankling in 
his mind, and whom even the eloquence of Boccaccio could 
not disunite from his protector Visconti, yet received the 
ardent reproaches of his friend without anger, though not 
without maintaining the freedom of his own opinions. 
Petrarch replied, that the anxiety of Boccaccio for the 
liberty of his friend was a thought most grateful to him ; 
but he assured Boccaccio that he preserved his freedom, even 
although it appeared that he bowed under a hard yoke. He 
hoped that he had not to learn to serve in his old age, he 
who had hitherto studied to preserve his independence ; but, 
in respect to servitude, he did not know whom it was most 
displeasing to serve, a tyrant like Visconti, or with Boc- 
caccio, a people of tyrants.* 

The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable asso- 
ciates as Beaumont and Fletcher ; whose labours are so 
combined, that no critic can detect the mingled production 
of either ; and whose lives are so closely united, that no 
biographer can compose the memoirs of the one without 
running into the history of the other. Their days were in- 
terwoven as their verses. Montaigne and Charron, in 
the eyes of posterity, are rivals ; but such literary friendship 
knows no rivalry. Such was Montaigne's affection for 
Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms 
of the Montaignes ; and Charron evinced his gratitude to the 
manes of his departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the 
sister of Montaigne. 

How pathetically Eeasmijs mourns over the death of his 
beloved Sir Thomas More ! — " In Moro mild videor ex- 
tinctus" — "I seem to see myself extinct in More." It was 
a melancholy presage of his own death, which shortly after 
followed. The Doric sweetness and simplicity of old Isaac 
Walton, the angler, were reflected in a mind as clear and 

* These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli's "Life of 
Boccaccio," p. 115. 



Literary Friendships, 215 

generous, when Charles Cotton continued the feelings, 
rather than the little work of Walton. Metastasio and 
Farinelli called each other il Gemello, the Twin : and both 
delighted to trace the resemblance of their lives and fates, 
and the perpetual alliauce of the verse and the voice. The 
famous John Baptista Porta had a love of the mysterious 
parts of sciences, such as physiognomy, natural magic, the 
cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious inven- 
tions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to 
perfection. This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat 
diminishing by a rumour that his brother John Vincent had 
a great share in the composition of his works ; but this never 
disturbed him ; and Peiresc, in an interesting account of a 
visit to this celebrated Neapolitan, observed, that though 
now aged and grey-haired, he treated his younger brother as 
a son. These single-hearted brothers, who would not marry 
that they might never be separated, knew of but one fame, 
and that was the fame of Porta. 

Goguet, the author of "The Origin of the Arts and 
Sciences," bequeathed his MSS. and his books to his friend 
Fugere, with whom he had long united his affections and 
his studies, that his surviving friend might proceed with 
them : but the author had died of a slow and painful dis- 
order, which Fugere had watched by his side, in silent de- 
spair. The sight of those MSS. and books was the friend's 
death-stroke ; half his soul, which had once given them 
animation, was parted from him, and a few weeks terminated 
his own days. When Lloyd heard of the death of Churchill, 
he neither wished to survive him, nor did.* The Abbe de 
St. Pierre gave an interesting proof of literary friendship for 
Yarignon, the geometrician. They were of congenial dispo- 
sitions, and St. Pierre, when he went to Paris, could not 
endure to part with Varignon, who was too poor to accom- 
pany him ; and St. Pierre was not rich. A certain income, 
however moderate, was necessary for the tranquil pursuits of 

* This event is thus told by Southey : " The news of Churchill's death 
was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner ; he was 
seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, ' I shall follow poor Charles,' 
took to his bed, from which he never rose again ; dying, if ever man died, 
of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here : Churchill's favourite 
sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and 
spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him 
during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her 
brother and her lover to the grave." — Ed. 



216 Literary Character. 

geometry. St. Pierre presented Varignon with a portion of 
his small income, accompanied by that delicacy of feeling 
which men of genius who know each other can best conceive : 
" I do not give it you," said St. Pierre, "as a salary but as 
an annuity, that you may be independent, and quit me when 
you dislike me." The same circumstance occurred between 
Akenside and Dyson. Dyson, when the poet was in great 
danger of adding one more illustrious name to the " Cala- 
mities of Authors," interposed between him and ill-fortune, 
by allowing him an annuity of three hundred a-year ; and, 
when he found the fame of his literary friend attacked, 
although not in the habit of composition, he published a 
defence of his poetical and philosophical character. The 
name and character of Dyson have been suffered to die away, 
without a single tribute of even biographical sympathy ; as 
that of Longtteville, the modest patron of Butleb, in 
whom that great political satirist found what the careless in- 
gratitude of a court had denied : but in the record of literary 
glory, the patron's name should be inscribed by the side of 
the literary character : for the public incurs an obligation 
whenever a man of genius is protected. 

The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed 
La Fontaine hastening every literary man to his prison- 
gate. Many have inscribed their works to their disgraced 
patrons, as Pope did so nobly to the Earl of Oxford in the 
Tower : 

When interest calls off all her sneaking train, 

And all the obliged desert, and all the vain, 

They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell, 

When the last lingering friend has bid farewell. 

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of 
feelings. The personal character may happen to be very 
opposite : the vivacious may be loved by the melancholic, 
and the wit by the man of learning. He who is vehement 
and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side 
of the friend who is calm and subtle. When we observe 
such friendships, we are apt to imagine that they are not 
real because the characters are dissimilar ; but it is their 
common tastes and pursuits which form a bond of union. 
Pomponius L^itus, so called from his natural good-humour, 
was the personal friend of Hebmolaus Babbabtjs, whose 
saturnine and melancholy disposition he often exhilarated ; 
the warm, impetuous Lutheb was the beloved friend of the 



Literary Friendships. 217 

mild and amiable MELAKCTHOisr ; the caustic Boileatt was 
the companion of Racine and Moliere ; and France, per- 
haps, owes the chefs-d'oeuvre of her tragic and her comic 
poet to her satirist. The delicate taste and the refining in- 
genuity of Htjed only attached him the more to the im- 
petuous and dogmatic Was-BUrton.* No men could be more 
opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and 
hasty Steele, and the cautious, serious, and the elegant 
Addison ; yet no literary friendship was more fortunate than 
their union. 

One glory is reserved for literary friendship. The friend- 
ship of a great name indicates the greatness of the character 
who appeals to it. When Sydenham mentioned, as a proof 
of the excellence of his method of treating acute diseases, 
that it had received the approbation of his illustrious friend 
Locke, the philosopher's opinion contributed to the phy- 
sician's success. 

Such have been the friendships of great literary characters ; 
but too true it is, that they have not always contributed thus 
largely to their mutual happiness. The querulous lament of 
G-leim to Klopstock is too generally participated. As 
Gleim lay on his death-bed he addressed the great bard of 
Germany — " I am dying, dear Klopstock ; and, as a dying 
man will I say, in this world we have not lived long enough 
together and for each other ; but in vain would we now recal 
the past!" What tenderness in the reproach! What self- 
accusation in its modesty ! 



CHAPTEE XX. 

The literary and the personal character. — The personal dispositions of an 
author may be the reverse of these which appear in his writings. — 
Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant authors. — Paradoxical 
appearances in the history of Genius. — Why the character of the man 
may be opposite to that of his writings. 

Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable in his 
writings, as those of an artist are imagined to appear in his 
works, where Michael Angelo is always great, and Raphael 
ever graceful ? 

Is the moralist a moral man ? Is he malignant who pub- 

* For a full account of their literary career see the first article in 
" Quarrels of Authors." 



218 Literary Character. 

lishes caustic satires ? Is he a libertine who composes loose 
poems ? And is he, whose imagination delights in terror and 
in blood, the very monster he paints ? 

Many licentious writers have led chaste lives. La Mothe 
le Vayer wrote two works of a free nature ; yet his was the 
unblemished life of a retired sage. Batle is the too faithful 
compiler of impurities, but he resisted the voluptuousness of 
the senses as much as Newton. La Fontaine wrote tales 
fertile in intrigue, yet the " bon-homme" has not left on 
record a single ingenious amour of his own. The Queen of 
Navarre's Tales are gross imitations of Boccaccio's; but 
she herself was a princess of irreproachable habits, and had 
given proof of the most rigid virtue ; but stories of intrigues, 
told in a natural style, formed the fashionable literature of 
the day, and the genius of the female writer was amused in 
becoming an historian without being an actor. Fortiguerra, 
the author of the Eicciardetto, abounds with loose and licen- 
tious descriptions, and yet neither his manners nor his per- 
sonal character were stained by the offending freedom of his 
inventions. Smollett's character is immaculate; yet he 
has described two scenes which offend even in the license of 
imagination. Cowley, who boasts with such gaiety of the 
versatility of his passion among so many mistresses, wanted 
even the confidence to address one. Thus, licentious writers 
may be very chaste persons. The imagination may be a 
volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice. 

Turn to the moralist — there we find Seneca, a usurer of 
seven millions, writing on moderate desires on a table of gold. 
Sallust, who so eloquently declaims against the licentious- 
ness of the age, was repeatedly accused in the senate of public 
and habitual debaucheries ; and when this inveigher against 
the spoilers of provinces attained to a remote government, he 
pillaged like Verres. That " Demosthenes was more capable 
of recommending than of imitating the virtues of our an- 
cestors," is the observation of Plutarch. Lucian, when 
young, declaimed against the friendship of the great, as another 
name for servitude ; but when his talents procured him a 
situation under the emperor, he facetiously compared him- 
self to those quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual 
cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir Thomas 
More, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be 
punished for his religion ; yet he became a fierce persecutor, 
nogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the 



Personal Disposition. 219 

moment the poet Rousseau was giving versions of the 
Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express 
it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams ; 
and an erotic poet of our times has composed night-hymns 
in churchyards with the same ardour with which he poured 
forth Anacreontics. Napoleon said of Bernardin St. Pierre, 
whose writings breathe the warm principles of humanity and 
social happiness in every page, that he was one of the worst 
private characters in France. I have heard this from other 
quarters ; it startles one ! The pathetic genius of Sterne 
played about his head, but never reached his heart.* Cardinal 
Richelieu wrote " The Perfection of a Christian, or the 
Life of a Christian ;" yet was he an utter stranger to Grospel 
maxims ; and Frederick the Great, when young, pub- 
lished his " Anti-Machiavel," and deceived the world by the 
promise of a pacific reign. This military genius protested 
against those political arts which he afterwards adroitly 
practised, uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail — and 
thus himself realising the political monster of Machiavel ! 

And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of an 
author, which may be quite the reverse from those which 
appear in his writings. Johnson would not believe that 
Horace was a happy man because his verses were cheerful, 
any more than he could think Pope so, because the poet is 
continually informing us of it. It surprised Spence when 
Pope told him that Rowe, the tragic poet, whom he had con- 
sidered so solemn a personage, " would laugh all day long, 
and do nothing else but laugh." Lord Kaimes says, that 
Arbuthnot must have been a great genius, for he exceeded 
Swift and Addison in humorous painting ; although we are 
informed he had nothing of that peculiarity in his character. 
Young, who is constantly contemning preferment in his 
writings, was all his life pining after it ; and the conversation 
of the sombrous author of the "Night Thoughts" was of the 
most volatile kind, abounding with trivial puns. He was 
• one of the first who subscribed to the assembly at Wellwyn. 
Mrs. Carter, who greatly admired his sublime poetry, ex- 
pressing her surprise at his social converse, he replied, 
M Madam, there is much difference between writing and 
talking." 

Moliere, on the contrary, whose humour is so perfectly 

* See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in the 
" Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume. 



220 Literary Character. 

comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and serious, and 
even melancholy. His strongly-featured physiognomy ex- 
hibits the face of a great tragic, rather than of a great comic, 
poet. Boileau called Moliere "The Contemplative Man." 
Those who make the world laugh often themselves laugh 
the least. A famous and witty harlequin of France was 
overcome with hypochondriasm, and consulted a physician, 
who, after inquiring about his malady, told his miserable 
patient, that he knew of no other medicine for him than to 
take frequent doses of Carlin — " I am Carlin himself," ex- 
claimed the melancholy man, in despair. Burton, the 
pleasant and vivacious author of " The Anatomy of Melan- 
choly," of whom it is noticed, that he could in an interval of 
vapours raise laughter in any company, in his chamber was 
"mute and mopish," and at last was so overcome by that 
intellectual disorder, which he appeared to have got rid of 
by writing his volume, that it is believed he closed his life in 
a fit of melancholy.* 

Could one have imagined that the brilliant wit, the luxu- 
riant raillery, and the fine and deep sense of Pascal, could 
have combined with the most opposite qualities — the hypo- 
chondriasis and bigotry of an ascetic ? Rocheeottcauld, 
in private life, was a conspicuous example of all those moral 
qualities of which he seemed to deny the existence, and 
exhibited in this respect a striking contrast to the Cardinal 
de Retz, who has presumed to censure him for his want of 
faith in the reality of virtue ; but De Retz himself was the 
unbeliever in disinterested virtue. This great genius was one 
of those pretended patriots destitute of a single one of the 
virtues for which he was the elamorous advocate of faction. 

When Valincour attributed the excessive tenderness in the 
tragedies of Racine to the poet's own impassioned character, 
the son amply showed that his father was by no means the 
slave of love. Racine never wrote a single love-poem, nor 
even had a mistress ; and his wife had never read his tragedies, 
for poetry was not her delight. Racine's motive for making 
love the constant source of action in his tragedies, was from 
the principle which has influenced so many poets, who 
usually conform to the prevalent taste of the times. In the 
court of a young monarch it was necessary that heroes should 

* It is reported of Mm that his only mode of alleviating Lis melan- 
choly was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to listen to 
the rough jokes of the bargemen. 



Personal Disposition. 221 

be lovers ; Corneille had nobly run in one career, and Eacine 
could not have existed as a great poet had he not rivalled 
him in an opposite one. The tender Eacese: was no lover ; 
but he was a subtle and epigrammatic observer, before whom 
his convivial friends never cared to open their minds ; and the 
caustic Boileat: truly said of him, " Eacise is far more 
malicious than I am." 

Alfieei speaks of his mistress as if he lived with her in 
the most unreserved familiarity ; the reverse was the case. 
And the gratitude and affection with which he describes his 
mother, and which she deserved, entered so little into his 
habitual feelings, that, after their early separation, he never 
saw her but once, though he often passed through the coun- 
try where she resided. 

Joh>~so>~ has composed a beautiful Eambler, describing 
the pleasures which result from the influence of good-humour ; 
and somewhat remarkably says, " Without good-humour 
learning and bravery can be only formidable, and confer that 
superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, 
where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance." 
He who could so finely discover the happy influence of this 
pleasing quality was himself a stranger to it, and " the roar 
and the ravage" were familiar to our lion. Men of genius 
frequently substitute their beautiful imagination for spon- 
taneous and natural sentiment. It is not therefore surprising 
if we are often erroneous in the conception we form of the 
personal character of a distant author. Klopstock, the 
votary of the muse of Zion, so astonished and warmed the 
sage Bodatee, that he invited the inspired bard to his house : 
but his visitor shocked the grave professor, when, instead of 
a poet rapt in silent meditation, a volatile youth leaped out 
of the chaise, who was an enthusiast for retirement only when 
writing verses. An artist, whose pictures exhibit a series of 
scenes of domestic tenderness, awakening all the charities of 
private life, I have heard, participated in them in no other wav 
than on his canvas. Evelyzs". who has written in favour of 
active life, "loved and lived in retirement;"* while Sir 

* Since this was written the correspondence of Evelyn has appeared, 
by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this 
very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to 
which they were both equally attached ; and confesses that the whole must 
be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not 
suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus Leibnitz, we are 



222 Literary Character. 

Geoege Mackenzie, who had been continually in the bustle 
of business, framed a eulogium on solitude. We see in 
Machiavel's code of tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal 
violence, a horrid picture of human nature ; but this retired 
philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country ; he 
participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew 
up these systemized crimes "as an observer, not as a cri- 
minal." Detjmmofd, whose sonnets still retain the beauty 
and the sweetness and the delicacy of the most amiable ima- 
gination, was a man of a harsh irritable temper, and has been 
thus characterised : — 

Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting. 

Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of 
their personal characters in their works. Inconstant men 
will write on constancy, and licentious minds may elevate 
themselves into poetry and piety. We should be unjust to 
some of the greatest geniuses if the extraordinary sentiments 
which they put into the mouths of their dramatic personages 
are maliciously to be applied to themselves. Etjeipides was 
accused of atheism when he introduced a denier of the gods 
on the stage. Milton has been censured by Claeke for 
the impiety of Satan ; and an enemy of Shakspeaee might 
have reproached him for his perfect delineation of the accom- 
plished villain Iago, as it was said that Dr. Mooee was hurt 
in the opinions of some by his odious Zeluco. Ceebillon 
complains of this : — " They charge me with all the iniquities of 
Atreus, and they consider me in some places as a wretch with 
whom it is unfit to associate ; as if all which the mind invents 
must be derived from the heart." This poet offers a striking 
instance of the little alliance existing between the literary 
and personal dispositions of an author. Ceebillon, who 
exulted, on his entrance into the Trench Academy, that he 
had never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, delighted to 
strike on the most harrowing string of the tragic lyre. In 
his Atreus the father drinks the blood of his son ; in his 
RJiadamistus the son expires under the hand of the father ; 
in his jElectra the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a 
painter of the soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man. 

told, laugbed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicee, and acknow- 
ledged that he never wrote it in earnest ; that a philosopher is not always 
obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof 
of the force of imagination. 



Montaigne. 223 

Montaigne appears to have been sensible of this fact in 
the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes to read 
their little anecdotes and private passions : — " Car j'ai une 
singuliere curiosite de cormaitre Tame et les naifs jugemens 
de mes auteurs. II faut bien juger lenr suffisance, mais non 
pas leurs mceurs, ni eux, par cette montre de leurs ecrits 
qu'ils etalent au theatre du monde." Which may be thus 
translated: "For I have a singular curiosity to know the 
soul and simple opinions of my authors. We must judge of 
their ability, but not of their manners, nor of themselves, by 
that show of their writings which they display on the theatre 
of the world." This is very just ; are we yet sure, however, 
that the simplicity of this old favourite of Europe might not 
have been as much a theatrical gesture as the sentimentality 
of Sterne ? The great anthors of the Port-Royal Logic have 
raised severe objections to prove that Montaigne was not 
quite so open in respect to those simple details which he ima- 
gined might diminish his personal importance with his readers. 
He pretends that he reveals all his infirmities and weaknesses, 
while he is perpetually passing himself off for something more 
than he is. He carefully informs us that he has " a page," 
the usual attendant of an independent gentleman, and lives in 
an old family chateau ; when the fact was, that his whole re- 
venue did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath 
mediocrity. He is also equally careful not to drop any men- 
tion of his having a cleric with a hag ; for he was a counsellor 
of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and the soldier. He 
trumpets himself forth for having been mayor of Bordeaux, 
as this offered an opportunity of telling us that he succeeded 
Marshal Biron, and resigned it to Marshal Matignon. Could 
he have discovered that any marshal had been a lawyer he 
would not have sunk that part of his life. Montaigne him- 
self has said, " that in forming a judgment of a man's life, 
particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end 
of it ;" and he more than once tells us that the chief study of 
his life is to die calm and silent ; and that he will plunge 
himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure 
abyss, which swallows one up in an instant ; that to die was 
the affair of a moment's suffering, and required no precepts. 
He talked of reposing on the "pillow of doubt." But how 
did this great philosopher die? He called for the more 
powerful opiates of the infallible church ! The mass was per- 
formed in his chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands 



224 Literary Character. 

dropped and failed him ; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart 
observes on this philosopher — " He expired in performing 
what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled 
to describe as an act of idolatry." 

We must not then consider that he who paints vice with 
energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an honourable man ; 
nor must we imagine that he who celebrates virtue is there- 
fore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart which 
knowing the right pursues the wrong. 

These paradoxical appearances in the history of genius pre- 
sent a curious moral phenomenon. Much must be attributed 
to the plastic nature of the versatile faculty itself. Unques- 
tionably many men of genius have often resisted the indul- 
gence of one talent to exercise another with equal power ; and 
some, who have solely composed sermons, could have touched on 
the foibles of society with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. 
Blackstone and Sir William Jones directed that genius 
to the austere studies of law and philology, which might 
have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So 
versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are some- 
times uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their 
subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When Bkebcelt, 
the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had com- 
pleted the first book as it now appears, he at the same time 
composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great 
arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should 
continue. The decision proved to be difficult. Are there not 
writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting 
one principle can make all things shrink into the pigmy form 
of ridicule, or by adopting another principle startle us by the 
gigantic monsters of their own exaggerated imagination ? On 
this principle, of the versatility of the faculty, a production of 
genius is a piece of art which, wrought up to its full effect 
with a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is 
merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of the mind. 

Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a 
mere sport of his talents — a game in which he is only the best 
player ? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions 
in our breasts be without any in his own ? A mere actor 
performing a part ? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, 
indifferent when he is indignant ? Is he an alien to all the 
wisdom and virtue he inspires ? No ! were men of genius 
themselves to assert this, and it is said some incline so to do, 



Contrasts, Personal and Literary. 225 

there is a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, 
in our own consciousness, which for ever assures us, that deep 
feelings and elevated thoughts can alone spring from those 
who feel deeply and think nobly. 

In proving that the character of the man may be very 
opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that the 
habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of the mind.* 
The influence of their studies over men of genius is limited. 
Out of the ideal world, man is reduced to be the active crea- 
ture of sensation. An author has, in truth, two distinct cha- 
racters : the literary, formed by the habits of his study ; the 
personal, by the habits of his situation. Gray, cold, effemi- 
nate, and timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his 
literary character. We see men of polished manners and 
bland affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a 
poniard ; while others in domestic life with the simplicity of 
children and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake 
the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their eloquence 
and the intrepidity of their spirit. The writings of the 
famous Baptista Porta are marked by the boldness of his 
genius, which formed a singular contrast with the pusilla- 
nimity of his conduct when menaced or attacked. The heart 
may be feeble, though the mind is strong. To think boldly 
may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly may be the 
habit of the constitution. 

However the personal character may contrast with that of 
their genius, still are the works themselves genuine, and exist 
as realities for us — and were so, doubtless, to the composers 
themselves in the act of composition. In the calm of study, 
a beautiful imagination may convert him whose morals are 
corrupt into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which 
yet may be cold in the business of life : as we have shown 
that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the 
cheerful man delight in "Night Thoughts." Sallust, the 
corrupt Sallust, might retain the most sublime conceptions 
of the virtues which were to save the Republic ; and Sterne, 

* Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary- 
character than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high genius 
the results of my own discoveries. This circumstance has frequently 
happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was published, Madame 
de Stael made this important confession in her recent work, ' ' Dix Annees 
d'Exil," p. 154. "Je ne pouvais me dissimuler que je n'etaispas une 
personne courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans V imagination, mais de la 
timidite dans le caractere" 

Q 



226 Literary Character. 

whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, 
while he was gradually creating incident after incident and 
touching successive emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre 
and Maria, might have thrilled — like some of his readers. 
Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they con- 
templated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though 
there may be no identity between the book and the man, 
still for us an author is ever an abstract being, and, as one 
of the Fathers said — " A dead man may sin dead, leaving 
books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his 
folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, 
is our companion, and is for us a real personage, perform- 
ing before us whatever it inspires — " He being dead, yet 
speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book ! 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The man of letters. — Occupies an intermediate station between authors 
and readers. — His solitude described. — Often the father of genius. — 
Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity. — The perfect character of a 
modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc. — Their utility to authors 
and artists. 

Among the active members of the literary republic, there is 
a class whom formerly we distinguished by the title of Men 
oe Lettees — a title which, with us, has nearly gone out of 
currency, though I do not think that the general term of 
" literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate. 

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so 
closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished 
by this simple circumstance, that the man of letters is not an 
author. 

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature — 
he who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as 
ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the 
statuary who refrains from sculpture. His pursuits are re- 
proached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and 
amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a 
particular sort of idler. 

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could 
not have appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. 
In the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was 



Men of Letters. 227 

that philosophical curiosity kindled which induced some to 
devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience 
some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and 
familiarising themselves with " the monuments of vanished 
minds," as books are called by D'Avenant with so much 
sublimity. Their expansive library presents an indestruc- 
tible history of the genius of every people, through all their 
eras — and whatever men have thought and whatever men 
have done, were at length discovered in books. 

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between 
authors and readers. They are gifted with more curiosity 
of knowledge, and more multiplied tastes, and by those 
precious collections which they are forming during their 
lives, are more completely furnished with the means than 
are possessed by the multitude who read, and the few who 
write. 

The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular 
subjects. His tastes are tinctured by their colouring, his 
mind is always shaping itself by their form. An author's 
works form his solitary pride, and his secret power ; while 
half his life wears away in the slow maturity of composition, 
and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim alike 
in disappointment or in possession. 

But soothing is the solitude of the Maf of Lettebs ! 
View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by the 
objects of his love ! He possesses them — and they possess 
him ! These volumes — images of our mind and passions ! — 
as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer 
to Shakspeare — those portfolios which gather up the inven- 
tions of genius, and that selected cabinet of medals which 
holds so many unwritten histories; — some favourite sculp- 
tures and pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here 
and there about his house — these are his furniture ! 

In his unceasing occupations the only repose he requires, 
consists not in quitting, but in changing them. Every day 
produces its discovery; every day in the life of a man of 
letters may furnish a multitude of emotions and of ideas. 
For him there is a silence amidst the world; and in the 
scene ever opening before him, all that has passed is acted 
over again, and all that is to come seems revealed as in a 
vision. Often his library is contiguous to his chamber,* and 

* The contiguity of the chamber to the library is not the solitary- 
fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when in France 

Q 2 



228 Literary Character. 

this domain " parva sed apta" this contracted space, has 
often marked the boundary of the existence of the opulent 
owner, who lives where he will die, contracting his days into 
hours ; and a whole life thus passed is found too short to 
close its designs. Such are the men who have not been 
unhappily described by the Hollanders as lief-hebbers, lovers 
or fanciers, and their collection as lief-hebbery, things of 
their love. The Dutch call everything for which they 
are impassioned lief-hebbery ; but their feeling being much 
stronger than their delicacy, they apply the term to every- 
thing, from poesy and picture to tulips and tobacco. The 
term wants the melody of the languages of genius; but 
something parallel is required to correct that indiscrimi- 
nate notion which most persons associate with that of col- 
lectors. 

It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the style 
of the age, that, " His book was his bride, and his study 
his bride-chamber." Many have voluntarily relinquished a 
public station and their rank in society, neglecting even 
their fortune and their health, for the life of self-oblivion of 
the man of letters. Count De Cayltts expended a princely 
income in the study and the encouragement of Art. He 
passed his mornings among the studios of artists, watching 
their progress, increasing his collections, and closing his day 
in the retirement of his own cabinet. His rank and his 
opulence were no obstructions to his settled habits. Ciceko 
himself, in his happier moments, addressing Atticus, ex- 
claimed — " I had much rather be sitting on your little bench 
under Aristotle's picture, than in the curule chairs of our 
great ones." This wish was probably sincere, and reminds 
us of another great politician who in his secession from public 

and Holland, I met with several of these amateurs, who had bounded 
their lives by the circle of their collections, and were rarely seen out of 
them. The late Duke of Roxburgh once expressed his delight to a literary 
friend of mine, that he had only to step from his sleeping apartment into 
his fine library ; so that he could command, at all moments, the gratifica- 
tion of pursuing his researches while he indulged his reveries. The 
Chevalier Verhulst, of Bruxelles, of whom we have a curious portrait 
prefixed to the catalogue of his pictures and curiosities, was one of those 
men of letters who experienced this strong affection for his collections, and 
to such a degree, that he never went out of his house for twenty years • 
where, however, he kept up a courteous intercourse with the lovers of art 
and literature. He was an enthusiastic votary of Rubens, of whom he 
has written a copious life in Dutch, the only work he appears to have 
composed. 



Book Collectors. 229 

affairs retreated to a literary life, where he appears suddenly 
to have discovered a new-found world. Fox's favourite line, 
which he often repeated, was — 

How various his employments whom the world 
Calls idle I 

De Saey, one of the Port-Eoyalists, was fond of repeating 
this livery remark of a man of wit — " That all the mischief 
in, the world comes from not being able to keep ourselves 
quiet in our room." 

But tranquillity is essential to the existence of the man 
of letters — an unbroken and devotional tranquillity. For 
though, unlike the author, his occupations are interrupted 
without inconvenience, and resumed without effort ; yet if 
the painful realities of life break into this visionary world of 
literature and art, there is an atmosphere of taste about him 
which will be dissolved, and harmonious ideas which will be 
chased away, as it happens when something is violently flung 
among the trees where the birds are singing — all instantly 
disperse ! 

Even to quit their collections for a short time is a real 
suffering to these lovers ; everything which surrounds them 
becomes endeared by habit, and by some higher associations. 
Men of letters have died with grief from having been forcibly 
deprived of the use of their libraries. De Thou, with all a 
brother's sympathy, in his great history, has recorded the sad 
fates of several who had witnessed their collections dispersed 
in the civil wars of France, or had otherwise been deprived 
of their precious volumes. Sir Bobert Cotton fell ill, and 
betrayed, in the ashy paleness of his countenance, the misery 
which killed him on the sequestration of his collections. 
" They have broken my heart who have locked up my library 
from me," was his lament. 

If this passion for acquisition and enjoyment be so strong 
and exquisite, what wonder that these "lovers" should 
regard all things as valueless in comparison with the objects 
of their love ? There seem to be spells in their collections, 
and in their fascination they have often submitted to the ruin 
of their personal, but not of their internal enjoyments. They 
have scorned to balance in the scales the treasures of litera- 
ture and art, though imperial magnificence once was ambitious 
to outweigh them. 

Van Praun, a friend of Albert Durer's, of whom we pos- 



230 Literary Character. 

sess a catalogue of pictures and prints, was one of these 
enthusiasts of taste. The Emperor of Germany, probably 
desirous of finding a royal road to a rare collection, sent an 
agent to procure the present one entire ; and that some deli- 
cacy might be observed with such a man, the purchase was 
to be proposed in the form of a mutual exchange ; the empe- 
ror had gold, pearls, and diamonds. Our lief-hebber having 
silently listened to the imperial agent, seemed astonished that 
such things should be considered as equivalents for a collec- 
tion of works of art, which had required a long life of expe- 
rience and many previous studies and practised tastes to have 
formed, and compared with which gold, pearls, and diamonds, 
afforded but a mean, an unequal, and a barbarous barter. 

If the man of letters be less dependent on others for the 
very perception of his own existence than men of the world 
are, his solitude, however, is not that of a desert : for all 
there tends to keep alive those concentrated feelings which 
cannot be indulged with security, or even without ridicule in 
general society. Like the Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not 
only live among the votaries of literature, but would live for 
them ; he throws open his library, his gallery, and his cabinet, 
to all the Grecians. Such men are the fathers of genius ; 
they seem to possess an aptitude in discovering those minds 
which are clouded over by the obscurity of their situations ; 
and it is they who so frequently project those benevolent 
institutions, where they have poured out the philanthropy of 
their hearts in that world which they appear to have for- 
saken. If Europe be literary, to whom does she owe this 
more than to these men of letters ? Is it not to their noble 
passion of amassing through life those magnificent collec- 
tions, which often bear the names of their founders from the 
gratitude of a following age ? Venice, Florence, and Copen- 
hagen, Oxford, and London, attest the existence of their 
labours. Our Bodlets and our Harleys, our Cottons and 
our Sloanes, our Ceacherodes, our Townleys, and our 
Banks, were of this race !* In the perpetuity of their own 

* Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602, first brought the old libraries at Oxford 
into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his own noble 
collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724), was pur- 
chased by the country, and is now in the British Museum ; and also are 
the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 1631 ; his 
collection is remarkable for its historic documents and state-papers. Sir 
Hans Sloan e's collections may be said to be the foundation of the British 
Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000Z., after his death, 



Living with Books. 231 

studies they felt as if they were extending human longevity, 
by throwing an unbroken light of knowledge into the next 
age. The private acquisitions of a solitary man of letters 
during half a century have become public endowments. A 
generous enthusiasm inspired these intrepid labours, and 
their voluntary privations of what the world calls its plea- 
sures and its honours, would form an interesting history not 
yet written ; their due, yet undischarged. 

But " men of the world," as they are emphatically dis- 
tinguished, imagine that a man so lifeless in "the world" 
must be one of the dead in it, and, with mistaken wit, would 
inscribe over the sepulchre of his library, " Here lies the 
body of our friend." If the man of letters have voluntarily 
quitted their "world," at least he has passed into another, 
where he enjoys a sense of existence through a long succes- 
sion of ages, and where Time, who destroys all things for 
others, for him only preserves and discovers. This world is 
best described by one who has lingered among its inspirations. 
"We are wafted into other times and strange lands, con- 
necting us by a sad but exalting relationship with the great 
events and great minds which have passed away. Our 
studies at once cherish and control the imagination, by lead- 
ing it over an unbounded range of the noblest scenes in the 
overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."* 

Living more with books than with men, which is often 
becoming better acquainted with man himself, though not 
always with men, the man of letters is more tolerant of 
opinions than opinionists are among themselves. Nor are 
his views of human affairs contracted to the day, like those 
who, in the heat and hurry of a too active life, prefer expe- 
dients to principles ; men who deem themselves politicians 
because they are not moralists ; to whom the centuries behind 
have conveyed no results, and who cannot see how the present 
time is always full of the future. " Everything," says the 
lively Burnet, " must be brought to the nature of tinder or 
gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," before they 
discover it. The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold 
indifference to the interests which divide society ; he is rarely 
observed as the head or the " rump of a party ;" he views at 

in 1749. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will be found on p. 2 of 
the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests 
to the same national establishment. — Ed, 

* "Quarterly Review," No. xxxiii. p. 145. 



232 Literary Character. 

a distance their temporary passions — those mighty beginnings, 
of which he knows the miserable terminations. 

Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of let- 
ters in Attictjs, who retreated from a political to a literary 
life. Had his letters accompanied those of Cicero, they 
would have illustrated the ideal character of his class. But 
the sage Attictjs rejected a popular celebrity for a passion 
not less powerful, yielding up his whole soul to study. 
Ciceeo, with all his devotion to literature, was at the same 
time agitated by another kind of glory, and the most perfect 
author in Rome imagined that he was enlarging his honours 
by the intrigues of the consulship. He has distinctly marked 
the character of the man of letters in the person of his friend 
Attictjs, for which he has expressed his respect, although he 
could not content himself with its imitation. " I know," 
says this man of genius and ambition, " I know the great- 
ness and ingenuousness of your soul, nor have I found any 
difference between us, but in a different choice of life ; a cer- 
tain sort of ambition has led me earnestly to seek after 
honours, while other motives, by no means blameable, induced 
you to adopt an honourable leisure ; honestum otium"* 
These motives appear in the interesting memoirs of this man 
of letters ; a contempt of political intrigues combined with a 
desire to escape from the splendid bustle of Rome to the 
learned leisure of Athens. He wished to dismiss a pompous 
train of slaves for the delight of assembling under his roof a 
literary society of readers and transcribers. And having col- 
lected under that roof the portraits or busts of the illustrious 
men of his country, inspired by their spirit and influenced by 
their virtues or their genius, he inscribed under them, in 
concise verses, the characters of their mind. Valuing wealth 
only for its use, a dignified economy enabled him to be 
profuse, and a moderate expenditure allowed him to be 
generous. 

The result of this literary life was the strong affections of 
the Athenians. At the first opportunity the absence of the 
man of letters offered, they raised a statue to him, conferring 
on our Pomponitjs the fond surname of Attictjs. To have 
received a name from the voice of the city they inhabited has 
happened to more than one man of letters. Pikelli, born a 
Neapolitan, but residing at Venice, among other peculiar 

* " Ad Atticum," Lib. i. Ep. 17. 



Men of Letters. 233 

honours received from the senate, was there distinguished by 
the affectionate title of "the Venetian." 

Yet such a character as Attictjs could not escape censure 
from " men of the world." They want the heart and the 
imagination to conceive something better than themselves. 
The happy indifference, perhaps the contempt of our Atticus 
for rival factions, they have stigmatised as a cold neutrality, 
a timid pusillanimous hypocrisy, Yet Atticus could not 
have been a mutual Mend, had not both parties alike held the 
man of letters as a sacred being amidst their disguised ambi- 
tion ; and the urbanity of Atticus, while it balanced the 
fierceness of two heroes, Pompey and Caesar, could even tem- 
per the rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and Cicero. 
A great man of our own country widely differed from the 
accusers of Atticus. Sir Matthew Hate lived in distracted 
times, and took the character of our man of letters for his 
model, adopting two principles in the conduct of the Roman. 
He engaged himself with no party business, and afforded a 
constant relief to the unfortunate, of whatever party. He 
was thus preserved amidst the contests of the times. 

If the personal interests of the man of letters be not deeply 
involved in society, his in dividual prosperity, however, is never 
contrary to public happiness. Other professions necessarily 
exist by the conflict and the calamities of the community : 
the politician becomes great by hatching an intrigue ; the 
lawyer, in counting his briefs; the physician, his sick-list. 
The soldier is clamorous for war ; the merchant riots on high 
prices. But the man of letters only calls for peace and books, 
to unite himself with his brothers scattered over Europe ; 
and his usefulness can only be felt at those intervals, when, 
after a long interchange of destruction, men, recovering their 
senses, discover that "knowledge is power." Burke, whose 
ample mind took in every conception of the -literary character, 
has finely touched on the distinction between this order of 
contemplative men, and the other active classes of society. 
In addressing Mr. Maloke, whose real character was that of 
a man of letters who first showed us the neglected state of 
our literary history, Burke observed — for I shall give his own 
words, always too beautiful to alter — " If you are not --called 
to exert your great talents, and employ your great acquisi- 
tions in the transitory service of your country, which is done 
in active life, you will continue to do it that permanent ser- 
vice which it receives from the labours of those who know 



234 Literary Character. 

how to make the silence of closets more "beneficial to the 
world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and 
camps." 

A moving picture of the literary life of a man of letters 
who was no author, would have been lost to us, had not 
Peieesc found in G-assekdi a twin spirit. So intimate was 
the biographer with the very thoughts, so closely united in 
the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer of the 
remarkable man whom he has immortalised, that when em- 
ployed on this elaborate resemblance of his friend, he was 
only painting himself with all the identifying strokes of self- 
love.* 

It was in the vast library of Pinelli, the founder of the 
most magnificent one in Europe, that Peieesc, then a youth, 
felt the remote hope of emulating the man of letters before 
his eyes. His life was not without preparation, nor without 
fortunate coincidences ; but there was a grandeur of design in 
the execution which originated in the genius of the man 
himself. 

The curious genius of Peieesc was marked by its precocity, 
as usually are strong passions in strong minds ; this intense 
curiosity was the germ of all those studies which seemed 
mature in his youth. He early resolved on a personal inter- 
course with the great literary characters of Europe ; and his 
friend has thrown over these literary travels that charm of 
detail by which we accompany Peieesc into the libraries of 
the learned ; there with the historian opening new sources of 
history, or with the critic correcting manuscripts, and settling 
points of erudition ; or by the opened cabinet of the antiquar}^ 
deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining medals. In 
the galleries of the curious in art, among their marbles, their 
pictures, and their prints, Peieesc has often revealed to the 
artist some secret in his own art. In the museum of the 
naturalist, or the garden of the botanist, there was no rarity 
of nature on which he had not something to communicate. 
His mind toiled with that impatience of knowledge, that be- 
comes a pain only when the mind is not on the advance. In 
England Peieesc was the associate of Camden and Selden, 
and had more than one interview with that friend to literary 

* " I suppose," writes Evelyn, that most agreeable enthusiast of litera- 
ture, to a travelling friend, " that you carry the life of that incomparable 
virtuoso always about you in your motions, not only because it is portable, 
but for that it is written by the pen of the great Gassendus." 



Peiresc. 235 

men, our calumniated James the First. One may judge by 
these who were the men whom Peiresc sought, and by 
whom he himself was ever after sought. Such, indeed, were 
immortal friendships ! Immortal they may be justly called, 
from the objects in which they concerned themselves, and 
from the permanent results of the combined studies of such 
friends. 

Another peculiar greatness in this literary character was 
Peiresc's enlarged devotion to literature out of its purest 
love for itself alone. He made his own universal curiosity 
the source of knowledge to other men. Considering the 
studious as forming but one great family wherever they were, 
for Peieesc the national repositories of knowledge in Europe 
formed but one collection for the world. This man of letters 
had possessed himself of their contents, that he might have 
manuscripts collated, unedited pieces explored, extracts sup- 
plied, and even draughtsmen employed in remote parts of the 
world, to furnish views and plans, and to copy antiquities for 
the student, who in some distant retirement often discovered 
that the literary treasures of the world were unfailingly 
opened to him by the secret devotion of this man of 
letters. 

Carrying on the same grandeur in his views, his universal 
mind busied itself in every part of the habitable globe. He 
kept up a noble traffic with all travellers, supplying them with 
philosophical instruments and recent inventions, by which he 
facilitated their discoveries, and secured their reception even 
in barbarous realms. In return he claimed, at his own cost, 
for he was "born rather to give than to receive," says 
G-assendi, fresh importations of Oriental literature, curious 
antiquities, or botanic rarities ; and it was the curiosity of 
Peiresc which first embellished his own garden, and thence 
the gardens of Europe, with a rich variety of exotic flowers 
and fruits.* Whenever presented with a medal, a vase, or a 
manuscript, he never slept over the gift till he had discovered 
what the donor delighted in ; and a book, a picture, a plant, 
when money could not be offered, fed their mutual passion, 
and sustained the general cause of science. The corre- 
spondence of Peiresc branched out to the farthest bounds of 
Ethiopia, connected both Americas, and had touched the 

* On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 151 ; and 
for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii. p. 409, of the 
same work. — Ed. 



236 Literary Character. 

newly-discovered extremities of the universe, when this intrepid 
mind closed in a premature death. 

I have drawn this imperfect view of Peieesc's character, 
that men of letters may be reminded of the capacities they 
possess. In the character of Peibesc, however, there still 
remains another peculiar feature. His fortune was not great ; 
and when he sometimes endured the reproach of those whose 
sordidness was startled at his prodigality of mind, and the 
great objects which were the result, Peieesc replied, that " a 
small matter suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, 
whose true wealth consists in the monuments of arts, the 
treasures of his library, and the brotherly affections of the 
ingenious." Peieesc was a French judge, but he supported 
his rank more by his own character than by luxury or parade. 
He would not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented 
his apartments ; but the walls were covered with the portraits 
of his literary friends ; and in the unadorned simplicity of his 
study, his books, his papers, and his letters were scattered 
about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor. There, 
stealing from the world, he would sometimes admit to his 
spare supper his friend Gassendi, "content," says that amiable 
philosopher, " to have me for his guest." 

Peieesc, like Pinelu, never published any work. These 
men of letters derived their pleasure, and perhaps their pride, 
from those vast strata of knowledge which their curiosity had 
heaped together in their mighty collections. They either 
were not endowed with that faculty of genius which strikes 
out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of com- 
position which embellishes minute ones. This deficiency in 
the minds of such men may be attributed to a thirst of learn- 
ing, which the very means to allay can only inflame. From 
all sides they are gathering information; and that knowledge 
seems never perfect to which every day brings new acquisi- 
tions. With these men, to compose is to hesitate • and to 
revise is to be mortified by fresh doubts and unsupplied omis- 
sions. Peieesc was employed all his life on a history of 
Provence; but, observes G-assendi, "He could not mature the 
birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into any shape of 
elegant form ; he was therefore content to take the midwife's 
part, by helping the happier labours of others." 

Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely 
authors, but who are often, however, contributing to the 
works of others ; and without whose secret labours the public 



Cultivators of Knoivledge. 237 

would not have possessed many valued ones. The delightful 
instruction which these men are constantly offering to 
authors and to artists, flows from their silent but uninter- 
rupted cultivation of literature and the arts. 

When Robertson, after his successful " History of Scot- 
land," was long irresolute in his designs, and still unpractised 
in that curious research which habitually occupies these men 
of letters, his admirers had nearly lost his popular productions, 
had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch enabled 
him to open the clasped books, and to drink of the sealed 
fountains. Robertson has confessed his inadequate know- 
ledge, and his overflowing gratitude, in letters which I have 
elsewhere printed. A suggestion by a man of letters has 
opened the career of many an aspirant. A hint from Walsh 
conveyed a new conception of English poetry to one of its 
masters. The celebrated treatise of G-rotius on " Peace and 
War " was projected by Peiresc. It was said of Maglia- 
bechi, who knew all books, and never wrote one, that by his 
diffusive communications he was in some respect concerned in 
all the great works of his times. Sir Robert Cotton greatly 
assisted Camden and Speed ; and that hermit of literature, 
Baker of Cambridge, was ever supplying with his invaluable 
researches Burnet, Kennet, Hearne, and Middleton. The 
concealed aid which men of letters afford authors, may be 
compared to those subterraneous streams, which, flowing into 
spacious lakes, are, though unobserved, enlarging the waters 
which attract the public eye. 

Count De Catlus, celebrated for his collections, and for 
his generous patronage of artists, has given the last touches 
to this picture of the man of letters, with all the delicacy and 
warmth of a self-painter. 

" His glory is confined to the mere power which he has of 
being one day useful to letters and to the arts ; for his whole 
life is employed in collecting materials of which learned men 
and artists make no use till after the death of him who 
amassed them. It affords him a very sensible pleasure to 
labour in hopes of being useful to those who pursue the same 
course of studies, while there are so great a number who die 
without discharging the debt which theyincur to society." 

Such a man of letters appears to have been the late Lord 
Woodhouselee. Mr. Mackenzie, returning from his lord- 
ship's literary retirement, meeting Mr. Alison, finely said, 
that " he hoped he was going to Woodhouselee ; for no man 



238 Literary Character. 

could go there without being happier, or return from it with- 
out being better." 

Shall we then hesitate to assert, that this class of literary 
men forms a useful, as well as a select order in society ? We 
see that their leisure is not idleness, that their studies are not 
unfruitful for the public, and that their opinions, purified 
from passions and prejudices, are always the soundest in the 
nation. They are counsellors whom statesmen may consult ; 
fathers of genius to whom authors and artists may look for 
aid, and friends of all nations ; for we ourselves have witnessed, 
during a war of thirty years, that the men of letters in 
England were still united with their brothers in France. The 
abode of Sir Joseph Banks was ever open to every literary 
and scientific foreigner ; while a wish expressed or a communi- 
cation written by this man oe letters, was even respected 
by a political power which, acknowledging no other rights, 
paid a voluntary tribute to the claims of science and the pri- 
vileges of literature. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Literary old age still learning. — Influence of late studies in life. — Occupa- 
tions in advanced age of the literary character. — Of literary men who 
have died at their studies. 

The old age of the literary character retains its enjoyments, 
and usually its powers — a happiness which accompanies no 
other. The old age of coquetry witnesses its own extinct 
beauty ; that of the " used " idler is left without a sensation ; 
that of the grasping Croesus exists only to envy his heir ; and 
that of the Machiavel who has no longer a voice in the 
cabinet, is but an unhappy spirit lingering to find its grave : 
but for the aged man of letters memory returns to her stores, 
and imagination is still on the wing amidst fresh discoveries 
and new designs. The others fall like dry leaves, but he drops 
like ripe fruit, and is valued when no longer on the tree. 

The constitutional melancholy of Johnson often tinged 
his views of human life. When he asserted that " no man 
adds much to his stock of knowledge, or improves much after 
forty," his theory was overturned by his own experience ; for 
his most interesting works were the productions of a very 
late period of life, formed out of the fresh knowledge with 
which he had then furnished himself. 



Old Age. 239 

The intellectual faculties, the latest to decline, are often 
vigorous in the decrepitude of age. The curious mind is still 
striking out into new pursuits, and the mind of genius is 
still creating. Ancoea impaeo ! — " Even yet I am learn- 
ing !" was the concise inscription on an ingenious device of 
an old man placed in a child's go-cart, with an hour-glass 
upon it, which, it is said, Michael Angelo applied to his own 
vast genius in his ninetieth year. Painters have improved 
even to extreme old age : West's last works were his best, 
and Titian was greatest on the verge of his century. Pous- 
sin was delighted with the discovery of this circumstance in 
the lives of painters. "As I grow older, I feel the desire of 
surpassing myself." And it was in the last years of his life, 
that with the finest poetical invention, he painted the alle- 
gorical pictures of the Seasons. A man of letters in his six- 
tieth year once told me, " It is but of late years that I have 
learnt the right use of books and the art of reading." 

Time, the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only 
enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor. A 
learned and highly intellectual friend once said to me, " If I 
have acquired more knowledge these last four years than I 
had hitherto, I shall add materially to my stores in the next 
four years ; and so at every subsequent period of my life, 
should I acquire only in the same proportion, the general 
mass of my knowledge will greatly accumulate. If we are 
not deprived by nature or misfortune of the means to pursue 
this perpetual augmentation of knowledge, I do not see but 
we may be still fully occupied and deeply interested even to 
the last day of our earthly term." Such is the delightful 
thought of Owen Feltham ; " If I die to-morrow, my life 
will be somewhat the sweeter to-day for knowledge." The 
perfectibility of the human mind, the animating theory of 
the eloquent De Stael, consists in the mass of our ideas, to 
which every age will now add, by means unknown to pre- 
ceding generations. Imagination was born at once perfect, 
and her arts find a term to their progress ; but there is no 
boundary to knowledge nor the discovery of thought. 

How beautiful in the old age of the literary character was 
the plan which a friend of mine pursued ! His mind, like a 
mirror whose quicksilver had not decayed, reflected all objects 
to the last. Full of learned studies and versatile curiosity, 
he annually projected a summer- tour on the Continent to 
some remarkable spot. The local associations were an un- 



240 Literary Character. 

failing source of agreeable impressions to a mind so well pre- 
pared, and he presented his friends with a " Voyage Litte- 
raire," as a new-year's gift. In such pursuits, where life is 
"rather wearing out than rusting out," as Bishop Cumber- 
land expressed it, scarcely shall we feel those continued 
menaces of death which shake the old age of men of no in- 
tellectual pursuits, who are dying so many years. 

Active enjoyments in the decline of life, then, constitute 
the happiness of literary men. The study of the arts and 
literature spreads a sunshine over the winter of their days. 
In the solitude and the night of human life, they discover 
that unregarded kindness of nature, which has given flowers 
that only open in the evening, and only bloom through the 
night-season. Neckee perceived the influence of late studies 
in life ; for he tells us, that " the era of threescore and ten is 
an agreeable age for writing ; your mind has not lost its 
vigour, and envy leaves you in peace." 

The opening of one of La Mothe le Vayee's Treatises 
is striking : " I should but ill return the favours God has 
granted me in the eightieth year of my age, should I allow 
myself to give way to that shameless want of occupation 
which all my life I have condemned ;" and the old man pro- 
ceeds with his " Observations on the Composition and Read- 
ing of Books." " If man be a bubble of air, it is then time 
that I should hasten my task ; for my eightieth year admo- 
nishes me to get my baggage together ere I leave the world," 
wrote Vaeeo, in opening his curious treatise de Me Hustica, 
which the sage lived to finish, and which, after nearly two 
thousand years, the world possesses. " My works are many, 
and I am old ; yet I still can fatigue and tire myself with 
writing more," says Peteaech in his " Epistle to Pos- 
terity." The literary character has been fully occupied in 
the eightieth and the ninetieth year of life. Isaac Walton 
still glowed while writing some of the most interesting bio- 
graphies in his eighty-fifth year, and in the ninetieth enriched 
the poetical world with the first publication of a romantic 
tale by Chalkhill, " the friend of Spenser." Bodmee, 
beyond eighty, was occupied on Homer, and Wielajstd on 
Cicero's Letters.* 

But the delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course 
of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to 

* See " Curiosities of Literature," on "The progress of old age in new 
studies." 



Studies in advanced Life. 241 

old age. The revolutions of modern chemistry kindled the 
curiosity of Dr. Reid to his latest days, and he studied by 
various means to prevent the deca}^ of his faculties, and to 
remedy the deficiencies of one failing sense by the increased 
activity of another. A late popular author, when advanced 
in life, discovered, in a class of reading to which he had never 
been accustomed, a profuse supply of fresh furniture for his 
mind. This felicity was the delightfulness of the old age of 
Goethe — literature, art, and science, formed his daily in- 
quiries ; and this venerable genius, prompt to receive each 
novel impression, was a companion for the youthful, and a 
communicator of knowledge even for the most curious. 

Even the steps of time are retraced, and we resume the 
possessions we seemed to have lost ; for in advanced life a 
return to our early studies refreshes and renovates the 
spirits : we open the poets who made us enthusiasts, and the 
philosophers who taught us to think, with a new source of 
feeling acquired by our own experience. Adam Smith con- 
fessed his satisfaction at this pleasure to Professor Dugald 
Stewart, while " he was reperusing, with the enthusiasm of 
a student, the tragic poets of ancient Greece, and Sophocles 
and Euripides lay open on his table." 

Dans ses veines toujours un jeune sang bouillone, 
Et Sophocle a cent ans peint encore Antigone. 

The calm philosophic Hume found that death only could 
interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving from 
Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous self-dialogue 
with Charon. "Happily," said this philosopher, "on re- 
tiring from the world I found my taste for reading return, 
even with greater avidity." We tind Gibbon, after the close 
of his History, returning with an appetite as keen to " a full 
repast on Homer and Aristophanes, and involving himself in 
the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato." Lord 
Woodhouselee found the recomposition of his " Lectures 
on History" so fascinating in the last period of his life, that 
Mr. Alison informs us, " it rewarded him with that peculiar 
delight, which has been often observed in the later years of 
literaiy men ; the delight of returning again to the studies of 
their youth, and of feeling under the snows of age the 
cheerful memories of their spring."* 

* There is an interesting chapter on Favourite Authors in ' { Curiosities of 
Literature," vol. ii., to which the reader may be referred for other 
examples. — Ed. 

E 



242 Literary Character. 

Not without a sense of exultation has the literary cha- 
racter felt this peculiar happiness, in the unbroken chain of 
his habits and his feelings. Hobbes exulted that he had 
outlived his enemies, and was still the same Hobbes ; and to 
demonstrate the reality of this existence, published, in the 
eighty-seventh year of his age, his version of the Odyssey, 
and the following year his Iliad. Of the happy results of 
literary habits in advanced life, the Count De The s saw, the 
elegant abridger of the old French romances, in his " Literary 
Advice to his Children" has drawn a most pleasing picture. 
With a taste for study, which he found rather inconvenient 
in the moveable existence of a man of the world, and a mili- 
tary wanderer, he had, however, contrived to reserve an hour 
or two every day for literary pursuits. The men of science, 
with whom he had chiefly associated, appear to have turned 
his passion to observation and knowledge rather than towards 
imagination and feeling ; the combination formed a wreath for 
his grey hairs. When Count De Tressan retired from a bril- 
liant to an affectionate circle, amidst his family, he pursued 
his literary tastes with the vivacity of a young author in- 
spired by the illusion of fame. At the age of seventy-five, 
with the imagination of a poet, he abridged, he translated, 
he recomposed his old Chivalric Romances, and his reani- 
mated fancy struck fire in the veins of the old man. Among 
the first designs of his retirement was a singular philoso- 
phical legacy for his children. It was a view of the history 
and progress of the human mind — of its principles, its errors, 
and its advantages, as these were reflected in himself ; in the 
dawnings of his taste, and the secret inclinations of his 
mind, which the men of genius of the age with whom he 
associated had developed. Expatiating on their memory, he 
calls on his children to witness the happiness of study, so 
evident in those pleasures which were soothing and adorning 
his old age. " Without knowledge, without literature," ex- 
claims the venerable enthusiast, " in whatever rank we are 
born, we can only resemble the vulgar." To the centenary 
Fontenelle the Count De Tressan was chiefly indebted 
for the happy life he derived from the cultivation of litera- 
ture ; and when this man of a hundred years died, Tressan, 
himself on the borders of the grave, would offer the last 
fruits of his mind in an eloge to his ancient master. It was 
the voice of the dying to the dead, a last moment of the love 
and sensibility of genius, which feeble life could not extinguish. 



Deaths of Literary Men. 243 

The genius of Ciceeo, inspired by the love of literature, 
has thrown something delightful over this latest season of 
life, in his de Senectute. To have written on old age, in old 
age, is to have obtained a triumph over Time.* 

When the literary character shall discover himself to be 
like a stranger in a new world, when all that he loved has 
not life, and all that lives has no love for old age : when his 
ear has ceased to listen, and nature has locked up the man 
within himself, he may still expire amidst his busied 
thoughts. Such aged votaries, like the old bees, have been 
found dying in their honeycombs. Let them preserve but 
the flame alive on the altar, and at the last moments they 
may be found in the act of sacrifice ! The venerable Bede, 
the instructor of his generation, and the historian for so 
many successive ones, expired in the act of dictating. Such 
was the fate of Peteaech, who, not long before his death, 
had written to a friend, " I read, I write, I think ; such is 
my life, and my pleasures as they were in my youth." 
Petrarch was found lying on a folio in his library, from which 
volume he had been busied making extracts for the biography 
of his countrymen. His domestics having often observed him 
studying in that reclining posture for days together, it was 
long before they discovered that the poet was no more. The 
fate of Leibnitz was similar : he was found dead with the 
"Argenis" of Barclay in his hand; he had been studying 
the style of that political romance as a model for his intended 
history of the House of Brunswick. The literary death of 
Baethelemt affords a remarkable proof of the force of unin- 
terrupted habits of study. He had been slightly looking 
over the newspaper, when suddenly he called for a Horace, 
opened the volume, and found the passage, on which he 
paused for a moment ; and then, too feeble to speak, made a 
sign to bring him Dacier's ; but his hands were already cold, 
the Horace fell — and the classical and dying man of letters 
sunk into a fainting fit, from which he never recovered. 
Such, too, was the fate — perhaps now told for the first time 
— of the great Lord Claeendon. It was in the midst of 
composition that his pen suddenly dropped from his hand on 
the paper, he took it up again, and again it dropped : de- 
prived of the sense of touch — his hand without motion — the 

* "Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age," by the late Sir Thomas 
Bernard, was written a year or two before he died. 

e2 



244 Literary Character. 

earl perceived himself struck by palsy — and the life of the 
noble exile closed amidst the warmth of a literary work un- 
finished ! 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Universality of genius. — Limited notion of genius entertained by the 
ancients. — Opposite faculties act with diminished force. — Men of genius 
excel only in a single art. 

The ancients addicted themselves to one species of compo- 
sition ; the tragic poet appears not to have entered into the 
province of comedy, nor, as far as we know, were their his- 
torians writers of verse. Their artists worked on the same 
principle ; and from Pliny's account of the ancient sculptors, 
we may infer that with them the true glory of genius con- 
sisted in carrying to perfection a single species of their art. 
They did not exercise themselves indifferently on all subjects, 
but cultivated the favourite ones which they had chosen from 
the impulse of their own imagination. The hand which could 
copy nature in a human form, with the characteristics of the 
age and the sex, and the occupations of life, refrained from 
attempting the colossal and ideal majesty of a divinity ; and 
when one of these sculptors, whose skill was pre-eminent in 
casting animals, had exquisitely wrought the glowing coursers 
for a triumphal car, he requested the aid of Praxiteles to place 
the driver in the chariot, that his work might not be dis- 
graced by a human form of inferior beauty to his animals. 
Alluding to the devotion of an ancient sculptor to his la- 
bours, Madame de Stael has finely said, " The history of his 
life was the history of his statue." 

Such was the limited conception which the ancients formed 
of genius. They confined it to particular objects or depart- 
ments in art. But there is a tendency among men of genius 
to ascribe a universality of power to a master-intellect. Dry- 
den imagined that Virgil could have written satire equally 
with Juvenal, and some have hardily defined genius as " a 
power to accomplish all that we undertake." But literary 
history will detect this fallacy, and the failures of so many 
eminent men are instructions from Nature which must not 
be lost on us. 

No man of genius put forth more expansive promises of 
universal power than Leibnitz. Science, imagination, his- 



Genius of Voltaire. 245 

tory, criticism, fertilized the richest of human soils ; yet 
Leibnitz, with immense powers and perpetual knowledge, 
dissipated them in the multiplicity of his pursuits. " The 
first of philosophers," the late Professor Playfair observed, 
" has left nothing in the immense tract of his intellect which 
can be distinguished as a monument of his genius." As a 
universalist, Voltaire remains unparalleled in ancient or in 
modern times. This voluminous idol of our neighbours stands 
without a rival in literature ; but an exception, even if this 
were one, cannot overturn a fundamental principle, for we 
draw our conclusions not from the fortune of one man of 
genius, but from the fate of many. The real claims of this 
great writer to invention and originality are as moderate as 
his size and his variety are astonishing. The wonder of his 
ninety volumes is, that he singly consists of a number of men 
of the second order, making up one great man ; for unques- 
tionably some could rival Voltaire in any single province, but 
no one but himself has possessed them all. Voltaire dis- 
covered a new art, that of creating a supplement to the 
genius which had preceded him ; and without Corneille, 
Racine, and Ariosto, it would be difficult to conjecture what 
sort of a poet Voltaire could have been. He was master, 
too, of a secret in composition, which consisted in a new style 
and manner. His style promotes, but never interrupts think- 
ing, while it renders all subjects familiar to our comprehen- 
sion : his manner consists in placing objects well known in 
new combinations ; he ploughed up the fallow lands, and 
renovated the worn-out exhausted soils. Swift defined a 
good style, as " proper words in proper places." Voltaire's 
impulse was of a higher flight, " proper thoughts on proper 
subjects." Swift's idea was that of a grammarian. Vol- 
taire's feeling was that of a philosopher. We are only con- 
sidering this universal writer in his literary character, which 
has fewer claims to the character of an inventor than several 
who never attained to his celebrity. 

Are the original powers of genius, then, limited to a single 
art, and even to departments in that art ? May not men of 
genius plume themselves with the vainglory of universality ? 
Let us dare to call this a vainglory ; for he who stands the 
first in his class, does not really add to the distinctive cha- 
racter of his genius, by a versatility which, however appa- 
rently successful, is always subordinate to the great character 
on which his fame rests. It is only that character which 



246 Literary Character. 

bears the raciness of the soil ; it is only that impulse whose 
solitary force stamps the authentic work of genius. To exe- 
cute equally well on a variety of subjects may raise a sus- 
picion of the nature of the executive power. Should it be 
mimetic, the ingenious writer may remain absolutely desti- 
tute of every claim to genius. Df Clos has been refused 
the honours of genius by the French critics, because he wrote 
equally well on a variet}' - of subjects. 

I know that this principle is contested by some of great 
name, who have themselves evinced a wonderful variety of 
powers. This penurious principle natters not that egotism 
which great writers share in common with the heroes who 
have aimed at universal empire. Besides, this universality 
may answer many temporary purposes. These writers may, 
however, observe that their contemporaries are continually 
disputing on the merits of their versatile productions, and the 
most contrary opinions are even formed by their admirers ; 
but their great individual character standing by itself, and 
resembling no other, is a positive excellence. It is time only, 
who is influenced by no name, and will never, like contempo- 
raries, mistake the true work of genius. 

And if it be true that the primary qualities of the mind are 
so different in men of genius as to render them more apt for 
one class than for another, it would seem that whenever a 
pre-eminent faculty had shaped the mind, a faculty of the 
most contrary nature must act with a diminished force, and 
the other often with an exclusive one. An impassioned and 
pathetic genius has never become equally eminent as a comic 
genius. Richardson" and Fielding could not have written 
each other's works. Could Butler, who excelled in wit and 
satire, like Milton have excelled in sentiment and imagina- 
tion ? Some eminent men have shown remarkable failures in 
their attempts to cultivate opposite departments in their own 
pursuits. The tragedies and the comedies of Dryden equally 
prove that he was not blest with a dramatic genius. Cibber, 
a spirited comic writer, was noted for the most degrading 
failures in tragedy ; while Rowe, successful in the softer 
tones of the tragic muse, proved as luckless a candidate for 
the smiles of the comic as the pathetic Otway. La Fon- 
taine, unrivalled humorist as a fabulist, found his opera 
hissed, and his romance utterly tedious. The true genius of 
Sterne was of a descriptive and pathetic cast, and his humour 
and ribaldry were a perpetual violation of his natural bent. 



Singleness of Genius. 247 

Aleieri's great tragic powers could not strike out into 
comedy or wit. S carbon declared he intended to write a 
tragedy. The experiment was not made ; but with his strong 
cast of mind and habitual associations, we probably have lost 
a new sort of " Roman comique." Cicero failed in poetry, 
Addison - in oratory, Voltaire in comedy, and Johnson in 
tragedy. The Anacreontic poet remains only Anacreontic in 
his epic. With the fine arts the same occurrence has hap- 
pened. It has been observed in painting, that the school 
eminent for design was deficient in colouring ; while those 
who with Titian's warmth could make the blood circulate in 
the flesh, could never rival the expression and anatomy of 
even the middling artists of the Roman school. 

Even among those rare and gifted minds which have startled 
us by the versatility of their powers, whence do they derive 
the high character of their genius ? Their durable claims are 
substantiated by what is inherent in themselves — what is 
individual — and not by that flexibility which may include so 
much which others can equal. We rate them by their posi- 
tive originality, not by their variety of powers. When we 
think of Young, it is only of his " Night Thoughts," not of 
his tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, which 
others have rivalled or excelled. Of Akenside, the solitary 
work of genius is his great poem ; his numerous odes are not 
of a higher order than those of other ode-writers. Had Pope 
only composed odes and tragedies, the great philosophical 
poet, master of human life and of perfect verse, had not left 
an undying name. Teniers, unrivalled in the walk of his 
genius, degraded history by the meanness of his conceptions. 
Such instances abound, and demonstrate an important truth 
in the history of genius that we cannot, however we may 
incline, enlarge the natural extent of our genius, any more 
than we can " add a cubit to our stature." We may force it 
into variations, but in multiplying mediocrity, or in doing 
what others can do, we add nothing to genius. 

So true is it that men of genius appear only to excel in 
a single art, or even in a single department of art, that it is 
usual with men of taste to resort to a particular artist for a 
particular object. Would you ornament your house by inte- 
rior decorations, to whom would you apply if you sought the 
perfection of art, but to different artists, of very distinct cha- 
racters in their invention and their execution ? For your 
arabesques you would call in the artist whose delicacy of 



248 Literary Character. 

touch and playfulness of ideas are not to be expected from 
the grandeur of the historical painter, or the sweetness of 
the Paysagiste. Is it not evident that men of genius excel 
only in one department of their art, and that whatever they 
do with the utmost original perfection, cannot be equally 
done by another man of genius ? He whose undeviating 
genius guards itself in its own true sphere, has the greatest 
chance of encountering no rival. He is a Dante, a Milton, 
a Michael Angelo, a Raphael : his hand will not labour on 
what the Italians call pasticcios ; and he remains not unimi- 
tated but inimitable. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Literature an avenue to glory. — An intellectual nobility not chimerical, 
but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of various nations. — 
Local associations with the memory of the man of genius. 

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those 
ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth. 
Like that illustrious Roman who owed nothing to his ances- 
tors, videtur ex se natus, these seem self-born ; and in the 
baptism of fame, they have given themselves their name. 
Bruyere has finely said of men of genius, " These men have 
neither ancestors nor posterity ; they alone compose their 
whole race." 

But Akenside, we have seen, blushed when his lameness 
reminded him of the fall of one of his father's cleavers ; Prior, 
the son of a vintner, could not endure to be reminded, though 
by his favourite Horace, that " the cask retains its flavour ;" 
like Voittjre, another descendant of a marchand de vin, whose 
heart sickened over that which exhilarates all other hearts, 
whenever his opinion of its quality was maliciously consulted. 
All these instances too evidently prove that genius is subject 
to the most vulgar infirmities. 

But some have thought more courageously. The amiable 
Rollin was the son of a cutler, but the historian of nations 
never felt his dignity compromised by his birth. Even late 
in life, he ingeniously alluded to his first occupation, for we 
find an epigram of his in sending a knife for a new-year's gift, 
" informing his friend, that should this present appear to 
come rather from Vulcan than from Minerva, it should not 
surprise, for," adds the epigrammatist, "it was from the 



Genius elevates Obscure Men. 249 

cavern of the Cyclops I began to direct my footsteps towards 
Parnassus." The great political negotiator, Cardinal D'Ossat, 
was elevated by his genius from an orphan state of indigence, 
and was alike destitute of ancestry, of titles, even of parents. 
On the day of his creation, when others of noble extraction 
assumed new titles from the seignorial names of their ancient 
houses, he was at a loss to fix on one. Having asked the 
Pope whether he should choose that of his bishopric, his holi- 
ness requested him to preserve his plain family name, which 
he had rendered famous by his own genius. The sons of a 
sword-maker, a potter, and a tax-gatherer, were the greatest 
of the orators, the most majestic of the poets, and the most 
graceful of the satirists of antiquity ; Demosthenes, Virgil, and 
Horace. The eloquent Massillon, the brilliant Elechier, 
Eousseau, and Diderot ; Johnson, G-oldsmith, and Franklin, 
arose amidst the most humble avocations. 

Vespasian raised a statue to the historian Josephtjs, though 
a Jew ; and the Athenians one to iEsop, though a slave. 
Even among great military republics the road to public 
honour was open, not alone to heroes and patricians, but to 
that solitary genius which derives from itself all which it 
gives to the public, and nothing from its birth or the public 
situation it occupies. 

It is the prerogative of genius to elevate obscure men to 
the higher class of society. If the influence of wealth in the 
present day has created a new aristocracy of its own, where 
they already begin to be jealous of their ranks, we may assert 
that genius creates a sort of intellectual nobility, which is 
now conferred by public feeling ; as heretofore the surnames 
of "the African," and of " Coriolanus," won by valour, asso- 
ciated with the names of the conqueror of Africa and the 
vanquisher of Corioli. Were men of genius, as such, to have 
armorial bearings, they might consist, not of imaginary things, 
of griffins and chimeras, but of deeds performed and of public 
works in existence. When Dois*di raised the great astrono- 
mical clock at the University of Padua, which was long the 
admiration of Europe, it gave a name and nobility to its 
maker and all his descendants. There still lives a Marquis 
Dondi dal' Horologio. Sir Hugh Middleton, in memory 
of his vast enterprise, changed his former arms to bear three 
piles, to perpetuate the interesting circumstance, that by these 
instruments he had strengthened the works he had invented, 
when his genius poured forth the waters through our metro- 



250 Literary Character. 

polis, thereby distinguishing it from all others in the world. 
Should not Evelyn have inserted an oak-tree in his bearings? 
for his " Sylva " occasioned the plantation of " many millions 
of timber-trees," and the present navy of Great Britain has 
been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn 
planted. There was an eminent Italian musician, who had a 
piece of music inscribed on his tomb ; and I have heard of a 
Dutch mathematician, who had a calculation for his epitaph. 

We who were reproached for a coldness in our national 
character, have caught the inspiration and enthusiasm for the 
works and the celebrity of genius ; the symptoms indeed were 
long dubious. Reynolds wished to have one of his own 
pictures, " Contemplation in the figure of an Angel," carried 
at his funeral ; a custom not unusual with foreign painters ; 
but it was not deemed prudent to comply with this last wish 
of the great artist, from the fears entertained as to the man- 
ner in which a London populace might have received such a 
novelty. This shows that the profound feeling of art is still 
confined within a circle among us, of which hereafter the cir- 
cumference perpetually enlarging, may embrace even the 
whole people. If the public have borrowed the names of 
some lords to dignify a "Sandwich" and a "Spencer," we 
may be allowed to raise into titles of literary nobility those 
distinctions which the public voice has attached to some 
authors ; JEschylus Potter, Athenian Stuart, and Anacreon 
Moore. Butler, in his own day, was more generally known 
by the single and singular name of Hudibras, than by his 
own. 

This intellectual nobility is not chimerical. Such titles 
must be found indeed, in the years which are to come ; yet 
the prelude of their fame distinguishes these men from the 
crowd. Whenever the rightful possessor appears, will not the 
eyes of all spectators be fixed on him ? I allude to scenes 
which I have witnessed. Will not even literary honours 
superadd a nobility to nobility ; and make a name instantly 
recognised which might otherwise be hidden under its rank, 
and remain unknown by its title ? Our illustrious list of 
literary noblemen is far more glorious than the satirical 
"Catalogue of Noble Authors," drawn up by a polished and 
heartless cynic, who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who 
were chivalrous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. 
One may presume on the existence of this intellectual 
nobility, from the extraordinary circumstance that the great 






Literary Honours. 251 

have actually felt a jealousy of the literary rank. But no 
rivalry can exist in the solitary honour conferred on an author. 
It is not an honour derived from birth nor creation, but from 
public opinion, and inseparable from his name, as an essen- 
tial quality ; for the diamond will sparkle and the rose will be 
fragrant, otherwise it is no diamond or rose. The great may 
well condescend to be humble to genius, since genius pays its 
homage in becoming proud of that humility. Cardinal 
Richelieu was mortified at the celebrity of the unbending 
Cok^eille ; so were several noblemen at Pope's indifference 
to their rank ; and Magliabechi, the book prodigy of his 
age, whom every literary stranger visited at Florence, assured 
Lord Haley that the Duke of Tuscany had become jealous of 
the attention he was receiving from foreigners, as they usually 
went to visit Mag-liabechi before the Grand Duke. 

A confession by Moistesqttieit states, with open candour, 
a fact in his life which confirms this jealousy of the great 
with the literary character. " On my entering into life I was 
spoken of as a man of talents, and people of condition gave 
me a favourable reception ; but when the success of my 
Persian Letters proved perhaps that I was not unworthy of 
my reputation, and the public began to esteem me, my recep- 
tion with the great was discouraging, and 1 experienced in- 
numerable mortifications" Montesquieu subjoins a reflection 
sufficiently humiliating for the mere nobleman : " The great, 
inwardly wounded with the glory of a celebrated name, seek 
to humble it. In general he only can patiently endure the 
fame of others, who deserves fame himself." This sort of 
jealousy unquestionably prevailed in the late Lord Okford, a 
wit, a man of the world, and a man of rank ; but while he 
considered literature as a mere amusement, he was mortified 
at not obtaining literary celebrity ; he felt his authorial 
always beneath his personal character. It fell to my lot to 
develope his real feelings respecting himself and the literary 
men of his age.* 

* " Calamities of Authors." I printed, in 1812, extracts from Walpole's 
correspondence with Cole. Some have considered that there was a severity 
of delineation in my character of Horace Walpole. I was the first, in my 
impartial view of his literary character, to proclaim to the world what it 
has now fully sanctioned, that "His most pleasing, if not his great talent, 
lay in letter-writing ; here he was without a rival. His correspondence 
abounded with literature, criticism, and wit of the most original and 
brilliant composition." This was published several years before the recent 
collection of his letters. 



252 Literary Character. 

Who was the dignified character, Lord Chesterfield or 
Samuel Johnson, when the great author, proud of his protracted 
and vast labour, rejected his lordship's tardy and trivial pa- 
tronage ?* "lvalue myself," says Swift, "upon making the 
ministry desire to he acquainted with Paenell, and not 
Parnell with the ministry." Pieon would not suffer the 
literary character to he lowered in his presence. Entering 
the apartment of a nobleman, who was conducting another 
peer to the stairs-head, the latter stopped to make way for 
Piron : " Pass on, my lord," said the noble master ; " pass, he 
is only a poet." Pieojst replied, "Since our qualities are 
declared, I shall take my rank," and placed himself before 
the lord. Nor is this pride, the true source of elevated cha- 
racter, refused to the great artist as well as the great author. 
Michael Angelo, invited by Julius II. to the court of 
Rome, found that intrigue had indisposed his holiness 
towards him, and more than once the great artist was suffered 
to linger in attendance in the antechamber. One day the 
indignant man of genius exclaimed, " Tell his holiness, if he 
wants me, he must look for me elsewhere." He flew back 
to his beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated 
cartoon which afterwards became a favourite study with all 
artists. Thrice the Pope wrote for his return, and at length 
menaced the little State of Tuscany with war, if Michael 
Angelo prolonged his absence. He returned. The sublime 
artist knelt at the foot of the Father of the Church, turning 
aside his troubled countenance in silence. An intermeddling 
bishop offered himself as a mediator, apologising for our artist 
by observing, " Of this proud humour are these painters 
made !" Julius turned to this pitiable mediator, and, as Vasari 
tells, used a switch on this occasion, observing, " You speak 
injuriously of him, while I am silent. It is you who are 

* Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his "Dictionary" to 
Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or sympathy during its 
weary progress ; when the moment of publication approached, his lordship, 
perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication, published in The World 
•two letters commending Johnson and his labours. It was this notice that 
produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he asks, — " Is not a patron, 
my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the 
water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help ? The 
notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early had 
been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy 
it ; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it ; till I am known, and do not 
want it." — Ed. 



Intellectual Nobility. 253 

ignorant." Baising Michael Angelo, Julius II. embraced 
the man of genius. 

" I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot create a 
Titian," said the Emperor Charles V. to his courtiers, who 
had become jealous of the hours and the half-hours which the 
monarch stole from them that he might converse with the 
man of genius at his work. There is an elevated intercourse 
between power and genius ; and if they are deficient in reci- 
procal esteem, neither are great. The intellectual nobility 
seems to have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French 
statesman ; for when the Academy was once not received 
with royal honours, he complained to the French monarch, 
observing, that when "a man of letters was presented to 
Francis I. for the first time, the king always advanced three 
steps from the throne to receive him." It is something 
more than an ingenious thought, when Fontenelle, in his 
eloge on Leibnitz, alluding to the death of Queen Anne, 
adds of her successor, that " The Elector of Hanover united 
under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great 
Britain, and Leibnitz and Newton."* 

If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life of 
literary labour, it is in speaking a foreign accent. This sounds 
like the distant plaudit of posterity. The distance of space 
between the literaiy character and the inquirer, in some 
respects represents the distance of time which separates the 
author from the next age. Fontenelle was never more gra- 
tified than when a Swede, arriving at the gates of Paris, in- 
quired of the custom-house officers where Fontenelle resided, 
and expressed his indignation that not one of them had ever 
heard of his name. Hobbes expresses his proud delight that 
his portrait was sought after by foreigners, and that the 
Great Duke of Tuscany made the philosopher the object of 
his first inquiries. Camden was not insensible to the visits of 
German noblemen, who were desirous of seeing the British 
Pliny ; and Pocock, while he received no aid from patronage 
at home for his Oriental studies, never relaxed in those unre- 

* This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however small, is 
■well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic surrounded 
himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen residence and 
burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here also Wieland 
resided for many years ; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel the ashes 
of Schiller repose by those of Gloethe, who for more than half a century 
assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar. — Ed. 



254 Literary Character. 

quited labours, animated by the learned foreigners, who hastened 
to see and converse with this prodigy of Eastern learning. 

Yes ! to the very presence of the man of genius will the 
world spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of admira* 
tion, or of love. Many a pilgrimage has he lived to receive, 
and many a crowd has followed his footsteps ! There are 
days in the life of genius which repay its sufferings. Demos- 
thenes confessed he was pleased when even a fishwoman of 
Athens pointed him out. Coeneille had his particular seat 
in the theatre, and the audience would rise to salute him when 
he entered. At the presence of Raynal in the House of Com- 
mons, the Speaker was requested to suspend the debate till 
that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the English 
parliament, was accommodated with a seat. Spinosa, when he 
gained an humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an 
obscure village in Holland, was visited by the first general in 
Europe, who, for the sake of this philosophical conference, 
suspended the march of the army. 

In all ages and in all countries has this feeling been created. 
It is neither a temporary ebullition nor an individual honour. 
It comes out of the heart of man. It is the passion of great 
souls. In Spain, whatever was most beautiful in its kind was 
described by the name of the great Spanish bard : # everything 
excellent was called a Lope. Italy would furnish a volume 
of the public honours decreed to literary men ; nor is that 
spirit extinct, though the national character has fallen by 
the chance of fortune. Metastasio and Tieaboschi received 
what had been accorded to Petbaech and to Poggio. Ger- 
rnany, patriotic to its literary characters, is the land of the 
enthusiasm of genius. On the borders of the Linnet, in the 
public walk of Zurich, the monument of G-esnee, erected 
by the votes of his fellow-citizens attests their sensibility ; 
and a solemn funeral honoured the remains of Klopstock, led 
by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty thousand votaries, 
so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this multitude 
preserved a mournful silence, and the interference of the police 
ceased to be necessary through the city at the solemn burial 
of the man of genius. Has even Holland proved insensible? 
The statue of Eeasmtjs, in Rotterdam, still animates her 
young students, and offers a noble example to her neighbours 
of the influence even of the sight of the statue of a man of 

* Lope de Vega. 



Honour to Genius, 255 

genius. Travellers never fail to mention Erasmus when 
Basle occupies their recollections ; so that, as Bayle observes, 
" He has rendered the place of his death as celebrated as that 
of his birth." In France, since Francis I. created genius, and 
Louis XIV. protected it, the impulse has been communicated 
to the French people. There the statues of their illustrious 
men spread inspiration on the spots which living they would 
have haunted : — in their theatres, the great dramatists ; in their 
Institute their illustrious authors ; in their public edifices, con- 
genial men of genius.* This is worthy of the country which 
privileged the family of La. Fontaine to be for ever exempt 
from taxes, and decreed that " the productions of the mind 
were not seizable," when the creditors of Crebillois" would 
have attached the produce of his tragedies. 

These distinctive honours accorded to genius were in unison 
with their decree respecting the will of Bayle. It was the 
subject of a lawsuit between the heir of the will and the in- 
heritor by blood. The latter contested that this great lite- 
rary character, being a fugitive for religion, and dying in a 
proscribed country, was divested by law of the power to dis- 
pose of his property, and that our author, when resident in 
Holland, in a civil sense was dead. In the Parliament of 
Toulouse the judge decided that learned men are free in all 
countries : that he who had sought in a foreign land an 
asylum from his love of letters, was no fugitive ; that it was 
unworthy of France to treat as a stranger a son in whom she 
gloried, and he protested against the notion of a civil death to 
such a man as Bayle, whose name was living throughout Europe. 
This judicial decision in France was in unison with that of 
the senate of Rotterdam, who declared of the emigrant Bayle, 
that " such a man should not be considered as a foreigner." 

Even the most common objects are consecrated when asso- 
ciated with the memor}^ of the man of genius. We still seek for 
his tomb on the spot where it has vanished. The enthusiasts 
of genius still wander on the hills of Pausilippo, and muse on 
Virgil to retrace his landscape. There is a grove at Mag- 

* We cannot bury the fame of our English worthies — that exists before 
us, independent of ourselves ; but we bury the influence of their inspiring 
presence in those immortal memorials of genius easy to be read by all men 
— their statues and their busts, consigning them to spots seldom visited, 
and often too obscure to be viewed. [We have recent evidence of a more 
noble acknowledgment of our great men. The statue of Dr. Jenner is 
placed in Trafalgar Square ; and Grantham has now a noble work to com- 
memorate its great townsman, Sir Isaac Newton.] 



256 Literary Character. 

dalen College which retains the name of Addison's walk, 
where still the student will linger; and there is a cave at 
Macao, which is still visited by the Portuguese from, a na- 
tional feeling, for Camoens there passed many days in com- 
posing his Lusiad. When Petrarch was passing by his native 
town, he was received with the honours of his fame ; but 
when the heads of the town conducted Petrarch to the house 
where the poet was born, and informed him that the pro- 
prietor had often wished to make alterations, but that the 
townspeople had risen to insist that the house which was 
consecrated by the birth of Petrarch should be preserved 
unchanged ; this was a triumph more affecting to Petrarch 
than his coronation at Pome.* 

In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of Boc- 
caccio ; and on a turret are seen the arms of the Medici, 
which they had sculptured there, with an inscription alluding 
to a small house and a name which filled the world ; and in 
Ferrara, the small house which Ariosto built was purchased, 
to be preserved, by the municipality, and there they still 
show the poet's study; and under his bust a simple but 
affecting tribute to genius records that " Ludovico Ariosto 
in this apartment wrote.' ' Two hundred and eighty years after 
the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the podesta, 
with the money of the commune, that "the public veneration 
may be maintained. "f " Foreigners," says Anthony Wood of 
Milton, " have, out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street 
to see the house and chamber where he was born;" and at 
Paris the house which Voltaire inhabited, and at Ferney his 
study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of Montes- 
quieu at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor has pre- 
served all the furniture, without altering anything, that the 
apartment where this great man meditated on his immortal 

* On this passage I find a remarkable manuscript note by Lord Byron : — 
" It would have pained me more that ' the proprietor' should have ' often 
wished to make alterations, than it could give pleasure that the rest of 
Arezzo rose against his right (for right he had) ; the depreciation of the 
lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of the highest is 
pleasing ; the sting of a scorpion is more in torture than the possession of 
anything could be in rapture." 

+ A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare was 
born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still re- 
ligiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in which 
Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the 
rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great 
master. — Ed. 



Relics of Genius. 257 

work should want for nothing to assist the reveries of the spec- 
tator; and on the side of the chimney is still seen a place which 
while writing he was accustomed to rub his feet against, as they 
rested on it. In a keep or dungeon of this feudal cMteau, 
the local association suggested to the philosopher his chapter 
on " The Liberty of the Citizen." It is the second 
chapter of the twelfth book, of which the close is remark- 
able. 

Let us regret that the little villa of Pope, and the poetic 
Leasowes of Shenstone, have fallen the victims of property 
as much as if destroyed by the barbarous hand which cut down 
the consecrated tree of Shakspeare. The very apartment of a 
man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he wrote on, 
are contemplated with curiosity ; the spot is full of local im- 
pressions. And all this happens from an unsatisfied desire to 
see and hear him whom we never can see nor hear ; yet, in a 
moment of illusion, if we listen to a traditional conversation, 
if we can revive one of his feelings, if we can catch but a 
dim image, we reproduce this man of genius before us, on 
whose features we so often dwell. Even the rage of the 
military spirit has taught itself to respect the abode of genius ; 
and Caesar and Sylla, who never spared the blood of their own 
Rome, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and alike saved the lite- 
rary city of Athens. Antiquity has preserved a beautiful 
incident of this nature, in the noble reply of the artist Pkoto- 
g-enes. When the city of Rhodes was taken by Demetrius, 
the man of genius was discovered in his garden, tranquilly 
finishing a picture. " How is it that you do not participate 
in the general alarm?" asked the conqueror. "Demetrius, 
you war against the Rhodians, but not against the fine arts," 
replied the man of genius. Demetrius had already shown 
this by his conduct, for he forbade firing that part of the city 
where the artist resided. 

The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst 
contending empires, from the days of Pindar to those of 
Buffon ; " the Historian of Nature's " chateau was preserved 
from this elevated feeling by Prince Schwartzenberg, as our 
Maklbohough had performed the same glorious office in 
guarding the hallowed asylum of Fekelon.* In the grandeur 

* The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a similar 
manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and Belgium, 
when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See "Curiosities 
of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, note. — Ed. 

S 



258 Literary Character. 

of Milton's verse we perceive the feeling he associated with 
this literary honour : 

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 

The house of Pindarus when temple and tower 

"Went to the ground . 

And the meanest things, the very household stuff, associated 
with the memory of the man of genius, become the objects 
of our affections. At a festival, in honour of Thomson the poet, 
the chair in which he composed part of his " Seasons " was 
produced, and appears to have communicated some of the rap- 
tures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair. 
Rabelais, amongst his drollest inventions, could not have 
imagined that his old cloak would have been preserved in the 
university of Montpelier for future doctors to wear on the day 
they took their degree ; nor could Shakspeare have sup- 
posed, with all his fancy, that the mulberry-tree which he 
planted would have been multiplied into relics. But in such 
instances the feeling is right, with a wrong direction ; and 
while the populace are exhausting their emotions on an old 
tree, an old chair, and an old cloak, they are paying that in- 
voluntary tribute to genius which forms its pride, and will 
generate the race. 



CHAPTER XXY. 

Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors. —National 
tastes a source of literary prejudices. — True Gfenius always the organ 
of its nation. — Master -writers preserve the distinct national character. 
— Grenius the organ of the state of the age. — Causes of its suppression 
in a people. — Often invented, but neglected. — The natural gradations of 
genius. — Men of Gfenius produce their usefulness in privacy. — The public 
mind is now the creation of the public writer. — Politicians affect to 
deny this principle. — Authors stand between the governors and the 
governed. — A view of the solitary Author in his study. — They create an 
epoch in history. — Influence of popular Authors. — The immortality of 
thought. — The Family of Gfenius illustrated by their genealogy. 

Literary fame, which is the sole preserver of all other 
fame, participates little, and remotely, in the remuneration 
and the honours of professional characters. All other profes- 
sions press more immediately on the wants and attentions of 
men, than the occupations of Literary Characters, who 
from their habits are secluded ; producing their usefulness 



England honoured by its Authors. 259 

often at a late period of life, and not always valued by their 
own generation. 

It is not the commercial character of a nation which in- 
spires veneration in mankind, nor will its military power 
engage the affections of its neighbours. So late as in 1700 
the Italian Gremelli told all Europe that he could find nothing 
among us but our writings to distinguish us from a people of 
barbarians. It was long considered that our genius partook 
of the density and variableness of our climate, and that we 
were incapacitated even by situation from the enjoyments of 
those beautiful arts which have not yet travelled to us — as if 
Nature herself had designed to disjoin us from more polished 
nations and brighter skies. 

At length we have triumphed ! Our philosophers, our 
poets, and our historians, are printed at foreign presses. 
This is a perpetual victory, and establishes the ascendancy 
of our genius, as much at least as the commerce and the 
prowess of England. This singular revolution in the history 
of the human mind, and by its reaction this singular revolu- 
tion in human affairs, was effected by a glorious succession of 
atjthoes, who have enabled our nation to arbitrate among 
the nations of Europe, and to possess ourselves of their in- 
voluntary esteem by discoveries in science, by principles in 
philosophy, by truths in history, and even by the graces of 
fiction ; and there is not a man of genius among foreigners 
who stands unconnected with our intellectual sovereignty. 
Even had our country displayed more limited resources than 
its awful powers have opened, and had the sphere of its 
dominion been enclosed by its island boundaries, if the same 
national literary character had predominated, we should have 
stood on the same eminence among our Continental rivals. The 
small cities of Athens and of Florence will perpetually attest 
the influence of the literary character over other nations. 
The one received the tribute of the mistress of the universe, 
when the Romans sent their youth to be educated at the 
Grecian city, while the other, at the revival of letters, beheld 
every polished European crowding to its little court. 

In closing this imperfect work by attempting to ascertain 
the real influence of authors on society, it will be necessary 
to notice some curious facts in the history of genius. 

The distinct literary tastes of different nations, and the 
repugnance they mutually betray for the master- writers of 
each other, is an important circumstance to the philosophical 

s2 



260 Literary Character, 

observer. These national tastes originate in modes of feeling, 
in customs, in idioms, and all the numerous associations preva- 
lent among every people. The reciprocal influence of man- 
ners on taste, and of taste on manners— of government and 
religion on the literature of a people, and of their literature 
on the national character, with other congenial objects of 
inquiry, still require a more ample investigation. Whoever 
attempts to reduce this diversity, and these strong contrasts 
of national tastes to one common standard, by forcing such 
dissimilar objects into comparative parallels, or by trying them 
by conventional principles and arbitrary regulations, will often 
condemn what in truth his mind is inadequate to compre- 
hend, and the experience of his associations to combine. 

These attempts have been the fertile source in literature of 
what may be called national prejudices. The French nation 
insists that the northerns are defective in taste — the taste, 
they tell us, which is estalibshed at Paris, and which existed 
at Athens : the Gothic imagination of the north spurns at 
the timid copiers of the Latin classics, and interminable dis- 
putes prevail in their literature, as in their architecture and 
their painting. Philosophy discovers a fact of which taste 
seems little conscious ; it is, that genius varies with the soil, 
and produces a nationality of taste. The feelings of mankind 
indeed have the same common source, but they must come to 
us through the medium and by the modifications of society. 
Love is a universal passion, but the poetry of love in diffe- 
rent nations is peculiar to each ; for every great poet belongs 
to his country. Petrarch, Lope de Vega, Racine, Shak- 
speare, and Sadi, would each express this universal passion by 
the most specific differences ; and the style that would be 
condemned as unnatural by one people, might be habitual 
with another. The concetti of the Italian, the figurative 
style of the Persian, the swelling grandeur of the Spaniard, 
the classical correctness of the French, are all modifications 
of genius, relatively true to each particular writer. On 
national tastes critics are but wrestlers : the Spaniard will 
still prefer his Lope de Vega to the French Racine, or the 
English his Shakspeare, as the Italian his Tasso and his 
Petrarch. Hence all national writers are studied with enthu- 
siasm by their own people, and their very peculiarities, 
offensive to others, with the natives constitute their excellences. 
Nor does this perpetual contest about the great writers of 
other nations solely arise from an association of patriotic 



National Authors. 261 

glory, but really because these great Dative writers have most 
strongly excited the sympathies and conformed to the habitual 
tastes of their own people. 

Hence, then, we deduce that true genius is the organ of 
its nation. The creative faculty is itself created ; for it is 
the nation which first imparts an impulse to the character of 
genius. Such is the real source of those distinct tastes 
which we perceive in all great national authors. Every lite- 
rary work, to ensure its success, must adapt itself to the 
sympathies and the understandings of the people it addresses. 
Hence those opposite characteristics, which are usually ascribed 
to the master- writers themselves, originate with the country, 
and not with the writer. Lope de Vega, and Caldeeon, in 
their dramas, and Ceev antes, who has left his name as the 
epithet of a peculiar grave humour, were Spaniards before 
they were men of genius. Coeneille, Racine, and Rabe- 
lais, are entirely of an opposite character to the Spaniards, 
having adapted their genius to their own declamatory and 
vivacious countrymen. Peteaech and Tasso display a fan- 
cifulness in depicting the passions, as Boccaccio narrates his 
facetious stories, quite distinct from the inventions and style 
of northern writers. Shakspeaee is placed at a wider interval 
from all of them than they are from each other, and is as per- 
fectly insular in his genius as his own countrymen were in 
their customs, and their modes of thinking and feeling. 

Thus the master-writers of every people preserve the dis- 
tinct national character in their works ; and hence that ex- 
traordinary enthusiasm with which every people read their 
own favourite authors ; but in which others cannot par- 
ticipate, and for which, with all their national prejudices, 
they often recriminate on each other with false and even 
ludicrous criticism. 

But genius is not only the organ of its nation, it is also 
that of the state of the times ; and a great work usually ori- 
ginates in the age. Certain events must precede the man of 
genius, who often becomes only the vehicle of public feeling. 
Machiavel has been reproached for propagating a political 
system subversive of all human honour and happiness ; but 
was it Machiavel who formed his age, or the age which 
created Machiavel ? Living among the petty principalities 
of Italy, where stratagem and assassination were the prac- 
tices of those wretched courts, what did that calumniated 
genius more than lift the veil from a cabinet of banditti ? 



262 Literary Character. 

Machiavel alarmed the world by exposing a system sub- 
versive of all human virtue and happiness, and, whether he 
meant it or not, certainly led the way to political freedom. 
On the same principle we may learn that Boccaccio would 
not have written so many indecent tales had not the scan- 
dalous lives of the monks engaged public attention. This we 
may now regret ; but the court of Rome felt the concealed 
satire, and that luxurious and numerous class in society never 
recovered from the chastisement. 

Montaigne has been censured for his universal scepticism, 
and for the unsettled notions he drew out on his motley 
page, which has been attributed to his incapacity of forming 
decisive opinions. "Que scais-je ?" was his motto. The 
same accusation may reach the gentle Erasmus, who alike 
offended the old catholics and the new reformers. The real 
source of their vacillations we may discover in the age itself. 
It was one of controversy and of civil wars, when the minds 
of men were thrown into perpetual agitation, and opinions, like 
the victories of the parties, were every day changing sides. 

Even in its advancement beyond the intelligence of its own 
age genius is but progressive. In nature all is continuous ; 
she makes no starts and leaps. Genius is said to soar, but we 
should rather say that genius climbs. Did the great Verij- 
iam, or Eawleigkh, or Dr. More, emancipate themselves from 
all the dreams of their age, from the occult agency of witch- 
craft, the astral influence, and the ghost and demon creed ? 

Before a particular man of genius can appear, certain 
events must arise to prepare the age for him. A great com- 
mercial nation, in the maturity of time, opened all the 
sources of wealth to the contemplation of Adam Smith. 
That extensive system of what is called political economy 
could not have been produced at any other time ; for before 
this period the materials of this work had but an imperfect 
existence, and the advances which this sort of science had 
made were only partial and preparatory. If the principle of 
Adam Smith's great work seems to confound the happiness 
of a nation with its wealth, we can scarcely reproach the man of 
genius, who we shall find is always reflecting back the feelings 
of his own nation, even in his most original speculations. 

In works of pure imagination we trace the same march of 
the human intellect; and we discover in those inventions, 
which appear sealed by their originality, how much has been 
dreived from the age and the people in which they were 



National Authors, 263 

produced. Every work of genius is tinctured by the feel- 
ings, and often originates in the events, of the times. The 
Inferno of Dante was caught from the popular superstitions 
of the age, and had been preceded by the gross visions which 
the monks had forged, usually for their own purposes. " La 
Citta dolente," and "la perduta gente," were familiar to the 
imaginations of the people, by the monkish visions, and it 
seems even by ocular illusions of Hell, exhibited in Mysteries, 
with its gulfs of flame, and its mountains of ice, and the 
shrieks of the condemned.* To produce the " Inferno" only 
required the giant step of genius, in the sombre, the awful, 
and the fierce, Dante. When the age of chivalry flourished, 
all breathed of love and courtesy ; the great man was the 
great lover, and the great, author the romancer. It was from 
his own age that Milton derived his greatest blemish — the 
introduction of school-divinity into poetry. In a polemical 
age the poet, as well as the sovereign, reflected the reigning 
tastes. 

There are accidents to which genius is liable, and by which 
it is frequently suppressed in a people. The establishment of 
the Inquisition in Spain at one stroke annihilated all the 
genius of the country. Cervantes said that the Inquisition 
had spoilt many of his most delightful inventions ; and un- 
questionably it silenced the wit and invention of a nation 
whose proverbs attest they possessed them even to luxu- 
riance. All the continental nations have boasted great native 
painters and architects, while these arts were long truly 
foreign to us. Theoretical critics, at a loss to account for 
this singularity, accused not only our climate, but even our 
diet, as the occult causes of our unfitness to cultivate them. 
Yet Montesquieu and Winkelmann might have observed that 
the air of fens and marshes had not deprived the gross feeders 
of Holland and Flanders of admirable artists. We have been 
outrageously calumniated. So far from any national inca- 
pacity, or obtuse feelings, attaching to ourselves in respect to 
these arts, the noblest efforts had long been made, not only 
by individuals, but by the magnificence of Henry VIII., who 
invited to his court Raphael and Titian ; but unfortunately 

* Sismondi relates that the bed of the river Arno, at Florence, was 
transformed into a representation of the Gulf of Hell, in the year 1304; 
and that all the variety of suffering that monkish imagination had invented 
was apparently inflicted on real persons, whose shrieks and groans gave 
fearful reality to the appalling scene. — Ed. 



264 Literary Character. 

only obtained Holbein. A later sovereign, Charles the First, 
not only possessed galleries of pictures, and was the greatest 
purchaser in Europe, for he raised their value, but he likewise 
possessed the taste and the science of the connoisseur. 
Something, indeed, had occurred to our national genius, which 
had thrown it into a stupifying state, from which it is yet 
hardly aroused. Could those foreign philosophers have 
ascended to moral causes, instead of vapouring forth fanciful 
notions, they might have struck at the true cause of the de- 
ficiency in our national genius. The jealousy of puritanic 
fanaticism had persecuted these arts from the first rise of the 
Reformation in this country. It had not only banished them 
from our churches and altar-pieces, but the fury of the 
people, and the "wisdom" of parliament, had alike combined 
to mutilate and even efface what little remained of painting 
and sculpture among us, Even within our own times this 
deadly hostility to art was not extinct ; for when a proposal 
was made gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by 
a series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure de- 
votion to Art, zealous to confute the Continental calumni- 
ators, asked only for walls to cover, George the Third highly 
approved of the plan. The design was put aside, as some 
had a notion that the cultivation of the fine arts in our naked 
churches was a return to Catholicism. Had this glorious 
plan been realized, the golden age of English art might have 
arisen. Every artist would have invented a subject most 
congenial to his powers. Reynolds would have emulated 
Raphael in the Virgin and Child in the manger, West had 
fixed on Christ raising the young man from the dead, Baery 
had profoundly meditated on the Jews rejecting Jesus. 
Thus did an age of genius perish before its birth ! It was on 
the occasion of this frustrated project that Barey, in the 
rage of disappointment, immortalised himself by a gratuitous 
labour of seven years on the walls of the Society of Arts, for 
which, it is said, the French government under Buonaparte 
offered ten thousand pounds. 

Thus also it has happened, that we have possessed among 
ourselves great architects, although opportunities for display- 
ing their genius have been rare. This the fate and fortune of 
two Englishmen attest. Without the fire of London we 
might not have shown the world one of the greatest archi- 
tects, in Sir Cheistopher Wreis ; had not a St. Paul's been 
required by the nation he would have found no opportunity 



English Architects. 265 

of displaying the magnificence of his genius, which even then 
was mutilated, as the original model bears witness to the 
world. That great occasion served this noble architect to 
multiply his powers in other public edifices : and it is here 
worth remarking that, had not Charles II. been seized by 
apoplexy, the royal residence, which was begun at Win- 
chester on a plan of Sir Christopher Wren's, by its magnifi- 
cence would have raised a Versailles for England. 

The fate of Ihtgo Jokes is as remarkable as that of 
Week. Whitehall afforded a proof to foreigners that among 
a people which, before that edifice appeared, was reproached 
for their total deficiency of feeling for the pure classical style 
of architecture, the true taste could nevertheless exist. This 
celebrated piece of architecture, however, is but a fragment 
of a grander composition, by which, had not the civil wars 
intervened, the fame of Britain would have balanced the 
glory of Greece, or Italy, or France, and would have shown 
that our country is more deficient in marble than in genius. 
Thus the fire of London produces a St. Paul's, and the civil 
wars suppress a Whitehall. Such circumstances in the his- 
tory of art among nations have not always been developed by 
those theorists who have calumniated the artists of England. 

In the history of genius it is remarkable that its work is 
often invented, and lies neglected. A close observer of this 
age pointed out to me that the military genius of that great 
French captain, who so long appeared to have conquered 
Europe, was derived from his applying the new principles of 
war discovered by Folabd and Gtjibeet. The genius of 
Folabd observed that, among the changes of military dis- 
cipline in the practice of war among European nations since 
the introduction of gunpowder, one of the ancient methods 
of the Romans had been improperly neglected, and, in his 
Commentaries on Polybius, Folard revived this forgotten 
mode of warfare. Gtjibeet, in his great work, " Histoire de 
la Milice Francaise," or rather the History of the Art of 
War, adopted Folard's system of charging by columns, and 
breaking the centre of the enemy, which seems to be the 
famous plan of our Rodney and Nelson in their maritime 
battles. But this favourite plan became the ridicule of the 
military ; and the boldness of his pen, with the high con^ 
fidence of the author, only excited adversaries to mortify his 
pretensions, and to treat him as a dreamer. From this per- 
petual opposition to his plans, and the neglect he incurred, 



266 Literary Character. 

Guibert died of " vexation of spirit ;" and the last words on 
the death-bed of this man of genius were, " One day they 
will know me!" Folard and Guibert created a Buona- 
parte, who studied them on the field of battle ; and he who 
would trace the military genius who so long held in suspense 
the fate of the world, may discover all that he performed in 
the neglected inventions of preceding genius. 

Hence also may we deduce the natural gradations of genius. 
Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of 
genius can appear. Before Homer there were other epic 
poets ; a catalogue of their names and their works has come 
down to us. Corneille could not have been the chief 
dramatist of France had not the founders of the French 
drama preceded him, and Pope could not have preceded 
Drydek . It was in the nature of things that a Giotto and 
a Cimabue should have preceded a Raphael and a Michael 
Angelo. 

Even the writings of such extravagant geniuses as Bruno 
and Cardan gave indications of the progress of the human 
mind ; and had Ramus not shaken the authority of the Orga- 
non of Aristotle we might not have had the Novum Organon of 
Bacon. Men slide into their degree in the scale of genius 
often by the exercise of a single quality which their prede- 
cessors did not possess, or by completing what at first was 
left imperfect. Truth is a single point in knowledge, as 
beauty is in art : ages revolve till a Newton and a Locke 
accomplish what an Aristotle and a Descartes began. 
The old theory of animal spirits, observes Professor Dugald 
Stewart, was applied by Descartes to explain the mental 
phenomena which led Newton into that train of thinking, 
which served as the groundwork of Hartley's theory of 
vibrations. The learning of one man makes others learned, 
and the influence of genius is in nothing more remarkable 
than in its effects on its brothers. Selden's treatise on the 
Syrian and Arabian Deities enabled Milton to comprise, in 
one hundred and thirty beautiful lines, the two large and 
learned syntagma which Selden had composed on that abstract 
subject. Leland, the father of British antiquities, impelled 
Stowe to work on his "Survey of London;" and Stowe's 
"London" inspired Camden's stupendous "Britannia." 
Herodotus produced Thucydides, and Thucydides Xenophon. 
With us Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon rose almost simul- 
taneously by mutual inspiration. There exists a perpetual 



Influence of Authors, 267 

action and reaction in the history of the human mind. It has 
frequently been inquired why certain periods seem to have 
been more favourable to a particular class of genius than 
another ; or, in other words, why men of genius appear in 
clusters. We have theories respecting barren periods, which 
are only satisfactorily accounted for by moral causes. Genius 
generates enthusiasm and rivalry ; but, having reached the 
meridian of its class, we find that there can be no progress in 
the limited perfection of human nature. All excellence in art, 
if it cannot advance, must decline. 

Important discoveries are often obtained by accident ; but 
the single work of a man of genius, which has at length 
changed the character of a people, and even of an age, is 
slowly matured in meditation. Even the mechanical inven- 
tions of genius must first become perfect in its own solitary 
abode ere the world can possess them. Men of genius then 
produce then* usefulness in privacy ; but it may not be of im- 
mediate application, and is often undervalued by their own 
generation. 

The influence of authors is so great, while the author him- 
self is so inconsiderable, that to some the cause may not 
appear commensurate to its effect. When Epicubus pub- 
lished his doctrines, men immediately began to express them- 
selves with freedom on the established religion, and the dark 
and fearful superstitions of paganism, falling into neglect, 
mouldered away. If, then, before the art of multiplying the 
productions of the human mind existed, the doctrines of a 
philosopher in manuscript or by lecture could diffuse them- 
selves throughout a literary nation, it will baffle the algebraist 
of metaphysics to calculate the unknown quantities of the 
propagation of human thought. There are problems in meta- 
physics, as well as in mathematics, which can never be re- 
solved. 

A small portion of mankind appears marked out by nature 
and by study for the purpose of cultivating their thoughts in 
peace, and of giving activity to their discoveries, by disclosing 
them to the people. " Could I," exclaims Montesquieu, 
whose heart was beating with the feelings of a great author, 
" could I but afford new reasons to men to love their duties, 
their king, their country, their laws, that they might become 
more sensible of their happiness under every government they 
live, and in every station they occupy, I should deem myself 
the happiest of men !" Such was the pure aspiration of the 



268 Literary Character. 

great author who studied to preserve, by ameliorating, the 
humane fabric of society. The same largeness of mind charac- 
terises all the eloquent friends of the human race, In an age 
of religious intolerance it inspired the President De Thotj to 
inculcate, from sad experience and a juster view of human 
nature, the impolicy as well as the inhumanity of religious 
persecutions, in that dedication to Henry IV., which Lord 
Mansfield declared he could never read without rapture. " I 
was not born for myself alone, but for my country and my 
friends!" exclaimed the genius which hallowed the virtuous 
pages of his immortal history. 

Even our liberal yet dispassionate Locke restrained the 
freedom of his inquiries, and corrected the errors which the 
highest intellect may fall into, by marking out that impas- 
sable boundary which must probably for ever limit all human 
intelligence ; for the maxim which Locke constantly incul- 
cates is that " Reason must be the last judge and guide in 
everything." A final answer to those who propagate their 
opinions, whatever they may be, with a sectarian spirit, to 
force the understandings of other men to their own modes of 
belief, and their own variable opinions. This alike includes 
those who yield up nothing to the genius of their age to cor- 
rect the imperfections of society, and those who, opposing all 
human experience, would annihilate what is most admirable 
in its institutions. 

The public mind is the creation of the Master- Writers — 
an axiom as demonstrable as any in Euclid, and a principle 
as sure in its operation as any in mechanics. Bacon's in- 
fluence over philosophy, and Grotius's over the political 
state of society, are still felt, and their principles practised 
far more than in their own age. These men of genius, in 
their solitude, and with their views not always comprehended 
by their contemporaries, became themselves the founders of 
our science and our legislation. When Locke and Mon- 
tesquieu appeared, the old systems of government were re- 
viewed, the principle of toleration was developed, and the 
revolutions of opinion were discovered. 

A noble thought of Vitruvius, who, of all the authors of 
antiquity, seems to have been most deeply imbued with the 
feelings of the literary character, has often struck me by the 
grandeur and the truth of its conception. " The sentiments 
of excellent writers," he says, " although their persons be for 
ever absent, exist in future ages ; and in councils and debates 



Influence of Authors, 269 

are of greater authority than those of the persons who are 
present." 

But politicians affect to disbelieve that abstract principles 
possess any considerable influence on the conduct of the sub- 
ject. They tell us that " in times of tranquillity they are not 
wanted, and in times of confusion they are never heard ;" this 
is the philosophy of men who do not choose that philosophy 
should disturb their fireside ! But it is in leisure, when they 
are not wanted, that the speculative part of mankind create 
them, and when they are wanted they are already prepared 
for the active multitude, who come, like a phalanx, pressing 
each other with a unity of feeling and an integrity of force. 
Palet would not close his eyes on what was passing before 
him ; for, he has observed, that during the convulsions at 
G-eneva, the political theory of Rousseau was prevalent in 
their contests ; while, in the political disputes of our country, 
the ideas of civil authority displayed in the works of Locke 
recurred in every form. The character of a great author can 
never be considered as subordinate in society ; nor do politi- 
cians secretly think so at the moment they are proclaiming 
it to the world, for, on the contrary, they consider the worst 
actions of men as of far less consequence than the propagation 
of their opinions. Politicians have exposed their disguised 
terrors. Books, as well as their authors, have been tried and 
condemned. Cromwell was alarmed when he saw the 
" Oceana " of Haeei^gto^t, and dreaded the effects of that 
volume more than the plots of the Royalists ; while Charles 
II. trembled at an author only in his manuscript state, and 
in the height of terror, and to the honour of genius, it was de- 
creed, that " Scribere est agere." — " The book of Tele- 
machus," says Madame de Stael, " was a courageous action." 
To insist with such ardour on the duties of a sovereign, and 
to paint with such truth a voluptuous reign, disgraced 
Fenelon at the court of Louis XIV., but the virtuous author 
raised a statue for himself in all hearts. Massillon's Petit 
Car erne was another of these animated recals of man to the 
sympathies of his nature, which proves the influence of an 
author ; for, during the contests of Louis XY. with the Par- 
liaments, large editions of this book were repeatedly printed 
and circulated through the kingdom. In such moments it is 
that a people find and know the value of a great author, 
whose work is the mighty organ which conveys their voice to 
their governors. 



270 Literary Character. 

But, if the influence of benevolent authors over society is 
great, it must not be forgotten that the abuse of this influence 
is terrific. Authors preside at a tribunal in Europe which is 
independent of all the powers of the earth — the tribunal of 
Opinion ! But since, as Sophocles has long declared, 
" Opinion is stronger than Truth," it is unquestionable that 
the falsest and the most depraved notions are, as long as 
these opinions maintain their force, accepted as immutable 
truths ; and the mistakes of one man become the crimes of a 
whole people. 

Authors stand between the governors and the governed, 
and form the single organ of both. Those who govern a nation 
cannot at the same time enlighten the people, for the execu- 
tive power is not empirical ; and the governed cannot think, 
for they have no continuity of leisure. The great systems 
of thought, and the great discoveries in moral and political 
philosophy, have come from the solitude of contemplative men, 
seldom occupied in public affairs or in private employments. 
The commercial world owes to two retired philosophers, Locke 
and Smith, those principles which dignify trade into a liberal 
pursuit, and connect it with the happiness and the glory of a 
people. A work in France, under the title of " L'Ami des 
Hommes," by the Marquis of Mirabeau, first spread there 
a general passion for agricultural pursuits ; and although the 
national ardour carried all to excess in the reveries of the 
" Economistes," yet marshes were drained and waste lands 
inclosed. The " Emilius" of Kottsseatj, whatever may be 
its errors and extravagances, operated a complete revolution 
in modern Europe, by communicating a bolder spirit to edu- 
cation, and improving the physical force and character of 
man. An Italian marquis, whose birth and habits seemed 
little favourable to study, operated a moral revolution in the 
administration of the laws. Beccaria dared to plead in 
favour of humanity against the prejudices of many centuries 
in his small volume on " Crimes and Punishments," and at 
length abolished torture ; while the French advocates drew 
their principles from that book, rather than from their 
national code, and our Blackstone quoted it with admira- 
tion ! Locke and Voltaire, having written on " Tolera- 
tion," have long made us tolerant. In all such cases the 
authors were themselves entirely unconnected with their 
subjects, except as speculative writers. 

Such are the authors who become universal in public 



Influence of Authors. 271 

opinion ; and it then happens that the work itself meets 
with the singular fate which that great genius Smeaton 
said happened to his stupendous "Pharos:" "The novelt}^ 
having yearly worn off, and the greatest real praise of the 
edifice being that nothing has happened to it — nothing has 
occurred to keep the talk of it alive." The fundamental 
principles of such works, after having long entered into our 
earliest instruction, become unquestionable as self-evident 
propositions ; yet no one, perhaps, at this day can rightly 
conceive the great merits of Locke's Treatises on " Educa- 
tion," and on "Toleration;" or the philosophical spirit of 
Montesquieu, and works of this high order, which first dif- 
fused a tone of thinking over Europe. The principles have 
become so incorporated with our judgment, and so interwoven 
with our feelings, that we can hardly now imagine the fer- 
vour they excited at the time, or the magnanimity of their 
authors in the decision of their opinions. Every first great 
monument of genius raises a new standard to our knowledge, 
from which the human mind takes its impulse and measures 
its advancement. The march of human thought through 
ages might be indicated by every great work as it is pro- 
gressively succeeded by others. It stands like the golden 
milliary column in the midst of Rome, from which all others 
reckoned their distances. 

But a scene of less grandeur, yet more beautiful, is the 
view of the solitary author himself in his own study — so 
deeply occupied, that whatever passes before him never 
reaches his observation, while, working more than twelve 
hours every day, he still murmurs as the hour strikes ; the 
volume still lies open, the page still importunes- — " And 
whence all this business?" He has made a discovery for 
us ! that never has there been anything important in the 
active world but what is reflected in the literary — books con- 
tain everything, even the falsehoods and the crimes which 
have been only projected by men ! This solitary man of 
genius is arranging the materials of instruction and curiosity 
from every country and every age ; he is striking out, in the 
concussion of new light, a new order of ideas for his own 
times ; he possesses secrets which men hide from their con- 
temporaries, truths they dared not utter, facts they dared not 
discover. View him in the stillness of meditation, his eager 
spirit busied over a copious page, and his eye sparkling with 
gladness ! He has concluded what his countrymen will here- 



272 Literary Character. 

after cherish as the legacy of genius — you see him now 
changed ; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into his 
very gestures — could you listen to the vaticinator ! But the 
next age only will quote his predictions. If he he the truly 
great author, he will be best comprehended by posterity, 
for the result of ten j^ears of solitary meditation has often 
required a whole century to be understood and to be adopted. 
The ideas of Bishop Berkeley, in his " Theory of Vision," 
were condemned as a philosophical romance, and now form an 
essential part of every treatise of optics ; and " The History 
of Oracles," by Fontenelle, says La Harpe, which, in his 
youth, was censured for its impiety, the centenarian lived to 
see regarded as a proof of his respect for religion. 

" But what influence can this solitaiy man, this author of 
genius, have on his nation, when he has none in the very 
street in which he lives ? and it may be suspected as little in 
his own house, whose inmates are hourly practising on the 
infantine simplicity which marks his character, and that fre- 
quent abstraction from what is passing under his own eyes ?" 

This solitary man of genius is stamping his own character 
on the minds of his own people. Take one instance, from 
others far more splendid, in the contrast presented by Frank- 
lin and Sir William Jones. The parsimonious habits, the 
money-getting precepts, the wary cunning, the little scruple 
about means, the fixed intent upon the end, of Dr. Frank- 
lin, imprinted themselves on his Americans. Loftier feelings 
could not elevate a man of genius who became the founder of 
a trading people, and who retained the early habits of a jour- 
neyman; while the elegant tastes of Sir Willtam Jones 
could inspire the servants of a commercial corporation to 
open new and vast sources of knowledge. A mere company 
of merchants, influenced by the literary character, enlarges 
the stores of the imagination and provides fresh materials for 
the history of human nature. 

Franklin, with that calm good sense which is freed from 
the passion of imagination, has himself declared this impor- 
tant truth relating to the literary character : — " I have always 
thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great 
changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he 
first forms a good plan ; and cutting off all amusements, or 
other employments that would divert his attention, makes 
the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." 
Fontenelle was of the same opinion, for he remarks that " a 



Influence of Authors. 273 

single great man is sufficient to accomplish a change in the 
taste of his age." The life of Granville Shaep is a striking 
illustration of the solitary force of individual character. 

It cannot be doubted that the great author, in the solitude 
of his study, has often created an epoch in the annals of man- 
kind. A single man of genius arose in a barbarous period in 
Italy, who gave birth not only to Italian, but to European 
literature. Poet, orator, philosopher, geographer, historian, 
and antiquary, Petbabch kindled a line of light through his 
native land, while a crowd of followers hailed their father- 
genius, who had stamped his character on the age. Des- 
caetes, it has been observed, accomplished a change in the 
taste of his age by the perspicacity and method for which he 
was indebted to his mathematical researches ; and " models 
of metaphysical analysis and logical discussions" in the works 
of Htjme and Smith have had the same influence in the 
writings of our own time. 

Even genius not of the same colossal size may aspire to 
add to the progressive mass of human improvement by its 
own single effort. When an author writes on a national 
subject, he awakens all the knowledge which slumbers in a 
nation, and calls around him, as it were, every man of talent ; 
and though his own fame may be eclipsed by his successors, 
yet the emanation, the morning light, broke from his soli- 
tary study. Our naturalist, Eat, though no man was more 
modest in his claims, delighted to tell a friend that " Since 
the publication of his catalogue of Cambridge plants, many 
were prompted to botanical studies, and to herbalise in their 
walks in the fields." Johnson has observed that " An emu- 
lation of study was raised by Cheke and Smith, to which 
even the present age perhaps owes many advantages, without 
remembering or knowing its benefactors. Rollin is only a 
compiler of history, and to the antiquary he is nothing! 
But races yet unborn will be enchanted by that excellent 
man, in whose works " the heart speaks to the heart," and 
whom Montesquieu called "The Bee of France." The 
Bacons, the Newtons, and the Leibnltzes were insulated 
by their own creative powers, and stood apart from the world, 
till the dispersers of knowledge became their interpreters to 
the people, opening a communication between two spots, 
which, though close to each other, were long separated — the 
closet and the world ! The Allisons, the Fontenelles, 
and the Fetjoos, the first popular authors in their nations 

t 



274 Literary Character. 

who taught England, Trance, and Spain to become a reading 
people, while their fugitive page imbues with intellectual 
sweetness every uncultivated mind, like the perfumed mould 
taken up by the Persian swimmer. " It was but a piece of 
common earth, but so delicate was its fragrance, that he 
who found it, in astonishment asked whether it were musk 
or amber. ' I am nothing but earth ; but roses were planted 
in my soil, and their odorous virtues have deliciously pene- 
trated through all my pores : I have retained the infusion of 
sweetness, otherwise I had been but a lump of earth !' " 

I have said that authors produce their usefulness in privacy, 
and that their good is not of immediate application, and often 
unvalued by their own generation. On this occasion the 
name of Evelyn always occurs to me. This author supplied 
the public with nearly thirty works, at a time when taste 
and curiosity were not yet domiciliated in our country ; his 
patriotism warmed beyond the eightieth year of his age, and 
in his dying hand he held another legacy for his nation. 
Evelyn conveys a pleasing idea of his own works and their 
design. He first taught his countrymen how to plant, then 
to build : and having taught them to be useful without doors, 
he then attempted to divert and occupy them within doors, 
by his treatises on chalcography, painting, medals, libraries. 
It was during the days of destruction and devastation both 
of woods and buildings, the civil wars of Charles the First, 
that a solitary author was projecting to make the nation de- 
light in repairing their evil, by inspiring them with the love 
of agriculture and architecture. Whether his enthusiasm 
was introducing to us a taste for medals and prints, or intent 
on purifying the city from smoke and nuisances, and sweeten- 
ing it by plantations of native plants, after having enriched 
our orchards and our gardens, placed summer-ices on our 
tables, and varied even the salads of our country ; furnishing 
" a Gardener's Kalendar," which, as Cowley said, was to 
last as long " as months and years;" whether the philoso- 
pher of the Royal Society, or the lighter satirist of the toilet, 
or the fine moralist for active as well as contemplative life — 
in all these changes of a studious life, the better part of 
his history has not yet been told. While Britain retains 
her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the 
"Sylva" of Eyelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. 
In the third edition of that work the heart of the patriot 
expands at its result ; he tells Charles II. " how many 



Influence of Authors. 275 

millions of timber trees, besides infinite others, have been 
propagated and planted at the instigation and hy the sole 
direction of this work." It was an author in his studious 
retreat who, casting a prophetic eye on the age we live in, 
secured the late victories of our naval sovereignty. Inquire 
at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been con- 
structed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which 
the genius of Evelyn planted.* 

The same character existed in France, where De Seeees, 
in 1599, composed a work on the cultivation of mulberry- 
trees, in reference to the art of raising silkworms. He 
taught his fellow-citizens to convert a leaf into silk, and silk 
to become the representative of gold. Our author encoun- 
tered the hostility of the prejudices of his times, even from 
Sully, in giving his country one of her staple commodities ; 
but I lately received a medal recently struck in honour of 
De Seeees by the Agricultural Society of the Department of 
the Seine. We slowly commemorate the intellectual 
characters of our own country; and our men of genius are 
still defrauded of the debt we are daily incurring of their 
posthumous fame. Let monuments be raised and let medals 
be struck! They are sparks of glory which might be 
scattered through the next age ! 

There is a singleness and unity in the pursuits of genius 
which is carried on through all ages, and will for ever connect 
the nations of the earth. The immoetalitt oe Thought 
exists eoe Man ! The veracity of Heeodottjs, after more 
than two thousand years, is now receiving a fresh confirmation. 
The single and precious idea of genius, however obscure, is 
eventually disclosed ; for original discoveries have often been 
the developments of former knowledge. The system of the 
circulation of the blood appears to have been obscurely con- 
jectured by Seevetus, who wanted experimental facts to 
support his hypothesis : Vesaeitjs had an imperfect percep- 
tion of the right motion of the blood : C^salpenus admits 
a circulation without comprehending its consequences ; at 
length our Haevet, by patient meditation and penetrating 
sagacity, removed the errors of his predecessors, and demon- 
strated the true system. Thus, too, Haetlet expanded the 

* Since this was first printed, the "Diary" of Evelyn has'appeared ; 
and although it could not add to his general character, yet I was not too 
sanguine in my anticipations of the diary of so perfect a literary character, 
who has shown how his studies were intermingled with the business of life. 

T2 



276 Literary Character. 

hint of "the association of ideas" from Locke, and raised a 
system on what Locke had only used for an accidental illus- 
tration. The "beautiful theory of vision hy Berkeley, was taken 
taken up by him just where Locke had dropped it: and as Pro- 
fessor Dugald Stewart describes, by following out his principles 
to their remoter consequences, Berkeley brought out a doc- 
trine which was as true as it seemed novel. Lydgate's " Fall 
of Princes," says Mr. Campbell, " probably suggested to Lord 
Sackville the idea of his "Mirror for Magistrates." The 
" Mirror for Magistrates " again gave hints to Spenser in 
allegory, and may also " have possibly suggested to Sbak- 
speare the idea of his historical plays." When indeed we 
find that that great original, Hogarth, adopted the idea of 
his " Idle and Industrious Apprentice," from the old comedy 
of Eastward Hoe, we easily conceive that some of the most 
original inventions of genius, whether the more profound or 
the more agreeable, may thus be tracked in the snow of time. 

In the history of genius therefore there is no chronology, 
for to its votaries everything it has done is present — the 
earliest attempt stands connected with the most recent. This 
continuity of ideas characterizes the human mind, and seems 
to yield an anticipation of its immortal nature. 

There is a consanguinity in the characters of men of 
genius, and a genealogy may be traced among their races. 
Men of genius in their different classes, living at distinct 
periods, or in remote countries, seem to reappear under 
another name ; and in this manner there exists in the lite- 
rary character an eternal transmigration. In the great 
march of the human intellect the same individual spirit seems 
still occupying the same place, and is still carrying on, with 
the same powers, his great work through a line of centuries. 
It was on this principle that one great poet has recently hailed 
his brother as "the Ariosto of the North," and Ariosto 
as " the Scott of the South." And can we deny the real 
existence of the genealogy of genius ? Copernicus, Galileo, 
Kepler, and Newton ! this is a single line of descent ! 

Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke, Descartes, and 
Newton, approximate more than we imagine. The same 
chain of intellect which Aristotle holds, through the 
intervals of time, is held by them ; and links will only be 
added by their successors. The naturalists Pliny, Gesner, 
Aldrovandtts, and Bufeon, derive differences in their 
characters from the spirit of the times ; but each only made 



Consanguinity of Genius. 277 

an accession to the family estate, while he was the legitimate 
representative of the family of the naturalists. Aeisto- 
phanes, Molieee, and Foote, are brothers of the family of 
national wits ; the wit of Aristophanes was a part of the com- 
mon property, and Moliere and Foote were Aristophanic. 
Pltjtaech, La Mothe le Vatee, and Batle, alike busied 
in amassing the materials of human thought and human 
action, with the same vigorous and vagrant curiosity, must 
have had the same habits of life. If Plutarch were credu- 
lous, La Mothe Le Vayer sceptical, and Bayle philosophical, 
all that can be said is, that though the heirs of the family 
may differ in their dispositions, no one will arraign the in- 
tegrity of the lineal descent. Vaeee did for the Romans what 
Patjsanias had done for the Greeks, and Monteatjcon for 
the French, and Camden for ourselves. 

My learned and reflecting friend, whose original researches 
have enriched our national history, has this observation on 
the character of Wicklieee : — " To complete our idea of the 
importance of Wickliffe, it is only necessary to add, that as 
his writings made John Huss the reformer of Bohemia, so the 
writings of John Huss led Martin Luther to be the reformer 
of Germany ; so extensive and so incalculable are the conse- 
quences which sometimes follow from human actions."* Our 
historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of 
Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John 
Huss ; we see the spark of creation caught at the moment : 
a striking influence of the generation of character ! Thus a 
father-spirit has many sons ; and several of the great revolu- 
tions in the history of man have been carried on by that secret 
creation of minds visibly operating on human affairs. In the 
history of the human mind, he takes an imperfect view, 
who is confined to contemporary knowledge, as well as he who 
stops short with the Ancients. Those who do not carry re- 
searches through the genealogical lines of genius, mutilate 
their minds. 

Such, then, is the influence of Authoes ! — those " great 
lights of the world," by whom the torch of genius has been 
successively seized and perpetually transferred from hand to 
hand, in the fleeting scene. Descaetes delivers it to New- 
ton, Bacon to Locke ; and the continuity of human affairs, 
through the rapid generations of man, is maintained from 
age to age ! 

* Turner's "History of England," vol. ii. p. 432. 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES. 



MISCELLANISTS. 



Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every 
people ; for it is they who form a communication between the 
learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge 
between those two great divisions of the public. Literary 
Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The 
studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours 
of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more 
elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been in- 
troduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investi- 
gation, augment the beauties of original genius. This de- 
lightful province has been termed in Germany the ^Esthetic, 
from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. ^Esthetic 
critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an 
author's thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a 
supplement to the genius of the original writer. Longinus 
and Addison are iEsthetic critics. The critics of the adverse 
school always look for a precedent, and if none is found, woe 
to the originality of a great writer ! 

Very elaborate criticisms have been formed by eminent 
writers, in which great learning and acute logic have only 
betrayed the absence of the iEsthetic faculty. Warburton 
called Addison an empty superficial writer, destitute himself 
of an atom of Addison's taste for the beautiful ; and Johnson 
is a flagrant instance that great powers of reasoning are 
more fatal to the works of imagination than had ever been 
suspected. 

By one of these learned critics was Montaigne, the venerable 
father of modern Miscellanies, called " a bold ignorant fellow." 
To thinking readers, this critical summary will appear myste- 
rious ; for Montaigne had imbibed the spirit of all the moral 
writers of antiquity ; and although he has made a capricious 
complaint of a defective memory, we cannot but wish the 
complaint had been more real ; for we discover in his works 



282 Literary Miscellanies. 

such a gathering of knowledge that it seems at times to stifle 
his own energies. Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, as 
Addison was censured by Warburton ; because both, like 
Socrates, smiled at that mere erudition which consists of 
knowing the thoughts of others and having no thoughts of 
our own. To weigh syllables, and to arrange dates, to adjust 
texts, and to heap annotations, has generally proved the 
absence of the higher faculties. When a more adventurous 
spirit of this herd attempts some novel discovery, often men 
of taste behold, with indignation, the perversions of their un- 
derstanding ; and a Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on 
a Virgil, had either a singular imbecility concealed under the 
arrogance of the scholar, or they did not believe what they 
told the public ; the one in his extraordinary invention of an 
interpolating editor, and the other in his more extraordinary 
explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. But what was still 
worse, the froth of the head became venom, when it reached 
the heart. 

Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent vanity, 
in making himself the idol of his lucubrations. If he had not 
done this, he had not performed the promise he makes at the 
commencement of his preface. An engaging tenderness pre- 
vails in these naive expressions which shall not be injured by 
a version. " Je 1'ay voue a la commodite particuliere de mes 
parens et amis ; a ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils ont a faire 
bientost) ils y puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes 
humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et 
plus vifue la conoissance qu'ils ont eu de moi." 

Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are 
writers, and remember they are men, will be our favourites. 
He who writes from the heart, will write to the heart ; every 
one is enabled to decide on his merits, and they will not be 
referred to learned heads, or a distant day. " Why," says 
Boileau, " are my verses read by all ? it is only because they 
speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write." 

Why have some of our fine writers interested more than 
others, who have not displayed inferior talents ? Why is 
Addison still the first of our essayists ? he has sometimes been 
excelled in criticisms more philosophical, in topics more 
interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a 
personal charm in the character he has assumed in his periodi- 
cal Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that 
we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little 



Miscellanists. 283 

humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his 
readers. Johnson and Hawkesworth we receive with respect, 
and we dismiss with awe ; we come from their writings as 
from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private con- 
versations. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who 
appear to write under a conviction of what they said ; the 
eloquent Cicero declaims but coldly on liberty, while in the 
impetuous Brutus may be perceived a man who is resolved to 
purchase it with his life.. We know little of Plutarch ; yet a 
spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works expresses a phi- 
losophical character capable of imitating, as well as admiring, 
the virtues he records. 

Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the 
same influence ; he interests us in his minutest motions, for 
he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensible of the power 
with which these minute strokes of description enter the 
heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagi- 
nation clings. He says, " If I give speeches and conversa- 
tions, I ought to give them justly ; for the humours and cha- 
racters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat what they 
say, and their manner of saying." I confess I am infinitely 
pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size 
of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and 
grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France ; 
with his having had the honour to naturalise in this country 
four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them, be- 
cause " he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner 
they are the better." In a word, with his passionate attach- 
ment to his garden, where he desired his heart to be buried, 
of his desire to escape from great employments, and having 
passed five years without going to town, where, by the way, 
" he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden 
has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic 
compositions, and I think that his character and dispositions 
may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered 
notices, than by any biographical account which can now be 
given of this man of genius. 

From this agreeable mode of writing, a species of composi- 
tions may be discriminated, which seems above all others to 
identify the reader with the writer ; compositions which are 
often discovered in a fugitive state, but to which their authors 
were prompted by the fine impulses of genius, derived from 
the peculiarity of their situation. Dictated by the heart, or 



284 Literary Miscellanies. 

polished with the fondness of delight, these productions are 
impressed by the seductive eloquence of genius, or attach us 
by the sensibility of taste. The object thus selected is no 
task imposed on the mind of the writer for the mere ambition 
of literature, but is a voluntary effusion, warm with all the 
sensations of a pathetic writer. In a word, they are the com- 
positions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply 
interested ; which it revolves on all its sides, which it paints 
in all its tints, and which it finishes with the same ardour it 
began. Among such works may be placed the exiled Boling- 
broke's " Reflections upon Exile ;" the retired Petrarch and 
Zimmerman's Essays on " Solitude;" the imprisoned Boethius's 
" Consolations of Philosophy ;" the oppressed Pierius Valeria- 
nus's Catalogue of " Literary Calamities ;" the deformed 
Hay's Essay on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's 
" Essays on Projects ;" the liberal Shenstone's Poem on 
" Economy." 

We may respect the profound genius of voluminous writers ; 
they are a kind of painters who occupy great room, and fill 
up, as a satirist expresses it, "an acre of canvas." But we 
love to dwell on those more delicate pieces, — a group of 
Cupids ; a Venus emerging from the waves ; a Psyche or an 
Aglaia, which embellish the cabinet of the man of taste. 

It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, 
to be multifarious and concise. Usbek, the Persian of Mon- 
tesquieu, is one of the profoundest philosophers, his letters 
are, however, but concise pages. Rochefoucault and La 
Bruyere are not superficial observers of human nature, 
although they have only written sentences. Of Tacitus it 
has been finely remarked by Montesquieu, that " he abridged 
everything because he saw everything." Montaigne approves 
of Plutarch and Seneca, because their loose papers were suited 
to his dispositions, and where knowledge is acquired without 
a tedious study. " It is," said he, " no great attempt to take 
one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no 
sequel or connexion." La Fontaine agreeably applauds short 
compositions : 

Les longs ouvrages me font peur ; 

Loin d'epuiser tine matiere, 

On n'en doit prendre que la fleur ; 

and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in 
favour of such opuscula ; he says, " Huge volumes, like the 
ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty 



Miscellanists. 285 

of labour and invention, but afford less of what is delicate, 
savoury, and well concocted, than smaller pieces." To quote 
so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid 
a mind as the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates 
of the human mind ; it is touching at the equator, and push- 
ing on to the pole. 

Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal " The 
Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book of man ; for 
all men are idlers ; we have hours which we pass with 
lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At 
those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our 
humours. We dart along their airy and concise page ; and 
their lively anecdote or their profound observation are so 
many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours. 

The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies ; Aulus 
Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works. 
These titles are so numerous, and include such gay and 
pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number 
that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their 
titles that they prove the great delight their authors expe- 
rienced in their composition. Among the titles are " a 
basket of flowers;" "an embroidered mantle;" and "a 
variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist as was the admirable 
Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with 
an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander : he calls him 
the delight of philosophers fatigued with study ; that they 
have recourse to his works as to a meadow enamelled with 
flowers, where the sense is delighted by a purer air ; and very 
elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to himself, 
drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus. 

The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised what 
is yet called in the southern parts of France, Le guay Saber, 
or the gay science. I consider these as the Miscellanists of 
their day ; they had their grave moralities, their tragical his- 
tories, and their sportive tales ; their verse and their prose. 
The village was in motion at their approach ; the castle was 
opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochon- 
driac listened to their solemn instruction and their airy 
fancy. I would call miscellaneous composition Le ghat 
Saber, and I would have every miscellaneous writer as 
solemn and as gay, as various and as pleasing, as these lively 
artists of versatility. 

Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous 



286 Literary Miscellanies. 

scenes. When I hold a volume of miscellanies, and run over 
with avidity the titles of its contents, my mind is enchanted, 
as if it were placed among the landscapes of Valais, which 
Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I 
fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those 
valleys, those rocks, encircled by the enchantments of optical 
illusion. I look, and behold at once the united seasons — " All 
climates in one place, all seasons in one instant." I gaze at 
once on a hundred rainbows, and trace the romantic figures 
of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated 
to the service of the Goddess Variety. 



PREFACES. 

I declare myself infinitely delighted by a preface. Is it 
exquisitely written ? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is 
the author inveterately dull ? it is a kind of preparatory in- 
formation, which may be very useful. It argues a deficiency 
in taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread ; for it is the 
attar of the author's roses ; every drop distilled at an im- 
mense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly 
of the foolish. 

I do no.t wish, however, to conceal that several writers, as 
well as readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of this 
species of literature. That fine writer Montesquieu, in clos- 
ing the preface to his "Persian Letters," says, "I do not 
praise my ' Persians ;' because it would be a very tedious 
thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself ; I mean a 
preface." Spence, in the preface to his "Polymetis," in- 
forms us, that " there is not any sort of writing which he 
sits down to with so much unwillingness as that of pre- 
faces ; and as he believes most people are not much fonder of 
reading them than he is of writing them, he shall get over 
this as fast as he can." Pelisson warmly protested against 
prefatory composition ; but when he published the works of 
Sarrasin, was wise enough to compose a very pleasing one. 
He, indeed, endeavoured to justify himself for acting against 
his own opinions, by this ingenious excuse, that, like funeral 
honours, it is proper to show the utmost regard for them 
when given to others, but to be" inattentive to them for our- 
selves. 

Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good rea- 






Prefaces. 287 

sons for admiring prefaces ; and barren as the investigation 
may appear, some literary amusement can be gathered. 

In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally a 
most accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced to the 
public ? the preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as 
long a one, as that of Pliny's on the Emperor Trajan. Such 
a preface is ringing an alarum bell for an author. If we look 
closer into the characters of these masters of ceremony, who 
thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and 
who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to 
the cause of taste, we discover that some accidental occur- 
rence has occasioned this vehement affection for the author, 
and which, like that of another kind of love, makes one 
commit so many extravagances. 

Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly observed by 
Shenstone, in his prefatory Essay to the " Elegies," that 
" discourses prefixed to poetry inculcate such tenets as may 
exhibit the performance to the greatest advantage. The 
fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we are to 
judge of it are afterwards adjusted." This observation 
might be exemplified by more instances than some readers 
might choose to read. It will be sufficient to observe with 
what art both Pope and Fontenelle have drawn up their 
Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they 
wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals. 
Has accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a 
subordinate branch of literature, or to some science which is 
not highly esteemed — look in the preface for its sublime 
panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and butterflies, have 
astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise 
their particular studies into the first ranks of philosoph}". 

It would appear that there is no he to which a prefacer is 
not tempted. I pass over the commodious prefaces of 
Dryden, which were ever adapted to the poem and not to 
poetry, to the author and not to literature. 

The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, having 
printed an edition of Aristophanes, first published in the 
preface that Saint Chrysostom was accustomed to place this 
comic poet under his pillow, that he might always have his 
works at hand. As, in that age, a saint was supposed to 
possess every human talent, good taste not excepted, Aristo- 
phanes thus recommended became a general favourite. The 
anecdote lasted for nearly two centuries ; and what was of 



288 Literary Miscellanies. 

greater consequence to Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aris- 
tophanes. This ingenious invention of the prefacer of Aris- 
tophanes at length was detected by Menage. 

The insincerity of prefaces arises whenever an author 
would disguise his solicitude for his work, by appearing neg- 
ligent, and even undesirous of its success. A writer will 
rarely conclude such a preface without betraying himself. I 
think that even Dr. Johnson forgot his sound dialectic in the 
admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In one part he says, 
"having laboured this work with so much application, I 
cannot but have some degree of parental fondness." But in 
his conclusion he tells us, " I dismiss it with frigid tranquil- 
lity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from 
praise." I deny the doctor's "frigidity." This polished 
period exhibits an affected stoicism, which no writer ever felt 
for the anxious labour of a great portion of life, addressed not 
merely to a class of readers, but to literary Europe. 

But if prefaces are rarely sincere or just, they are, not- 
withstanding, literary opuscula in which the author is mate- 
rially concerned. A work with a poor preface, like a person 
who comes with an indifferent recommendation, must display 
uncommon merit to master our prejudices, and to please us, 
as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works ornamented by a 
finished preface, such as Johnson not infrequent^ presented 
to his friends or his booksellers, inspire us with awe ; we ob- 
serve a veteran guard placed in the porch, and we are induced 
to conclude from this appearance that some person of emi- 
nence resides in the place itself. 

The public are treated with contempt when an author 
professes to publish his puerilities. This Warburton did, in 
his pompous edition of Shakspeare. In the preface he in- 
formed the public, that his notes " were among his younger 
amusements, when he turned over these sort of writers." 
This ungracious compliment to Shakspeare and the public, 
merited that perfect scourging which our haughty commen- 
tator received from the sarcastic " Canons of Criticism."* 
Scudery was a writer of some genius, and great variety. 
His prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades. In his epic 
poem of Alaric, he says, " I have such a facility in writing 
verses, and also in my invention, that a poem of double its 

* See the essay on Warburton and his disputes in ' ' Quarrels of 
Authors." — Ed. 



Prefaces. 289 

length would have cost me' little trouble. Although it con- 
tains only eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics 
do not exhibit more embellishments than mine." And to 
conclude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la 
Houssaie, in the preface to his translation of " The Prince" of 
Machiavel, instructs us, that " he considers his copy as supe- 
rior to the original, because it is everywhere intelligible, and 
Machiavel is frequently obscure." I have seen in the play- 
bills of strollers, a very pompous description of the trium- 
phant entry of Alexander into Babylon ; had tbey said 
nothing about the triumph, it might have passed without ex- 
citing ridicule ; and one might not so maliciously have per- 
ceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled as elephants, 
and the triumphal car discovered its want of a lid. But 
having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen 
our eye. To these imprudent authors and actors we may 
apply a Spanish proverb, which has the peculiar quaintness 
of that people, Aviendo pregonado vino, venden vinagre : 
" Having cried up their wine, they sell us vinegar." 

A ridiculous humility in a preface is not less despicable. 
Many idle apologies were formerly in vogue for publication, 
and formed a literary cant, of which now the meanest 
writers perceive the futility. A literary anecdote of the 
Romans has been preserved, which is sufficiently curious. 
One Albinus, in the preface to his Roman History, intercedes 
for pardon for his numerous blunders of phraseology ; ob- 
serving that they were the more excusable, as he had com- 
posed his history in the Greek language, with which he was 
not so familiar as his maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies 
him on this ; and justly observes, that our Albinus had 
merited the pardon he solicits, if a decree of the senate had 
compelled him thus to have composed it, and he could not 
have obtained a dispensation. The avowal of our ignorance 
of the language we employ is like that excuse which some 
writers make for composing on topics in which they are 
little conversant. A reader's heart is not so easily mollified ; 
and it is a melancholy truth for literary men that the plea- 
sure of abusing an author is generally superior to that of 
admiring him. One appears to display more critical acumen 
than the other, by showing that though we do not choose to 
take the trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius 
than the author. These suppliant prefacers are described by 
Boileau. 



290 Literary Miscellanies. 

Un auteur a genoux dans une humble preface 
Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace ; 
II ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrite, 
Qui lui fait son proces de pleine autorite. 

Low in a bumble preface authors kneel ; 
In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel. 
Callous, that irritated judge with awe, 
Inflicts the penalties and arms the law. 

The most entertaining prefaces in our language are those 
of Dryden ; and though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that 
they were merely formed 

To raise the volume's price a shilling, 

yet these were the earliest commencements of English cri- 
ticism, and the first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of 
readers, and to form a national taste. Dryden has had the 
candour to acquaint us with his secret of prefatory composi- 
tion ; for in that one to his Tales he says, " the nature of 
preface-writing is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor 
in it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Mon- 
taigne." There is no great risk in establishing this observa- 
tion as an axiom in literature ; for should a prefacer loiter, it 
is never difficult to get rid of lame persons, by escaping from 
them ; and the reader may make a preface as concise as he 
chooses. 

It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable 
colours, in this useful page, without incurring the contempt 
of egotism. After a writer has rendered himself conspicuous 
by his industry or his genius, his admirers are not displeased 
to hear something relative to him from himself. Hayley, in 
the preface to his poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in 
his personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to 
literature as the only mode by which he could render himself 
of some utility to his country. There is a modesty in the 
prefaces of Pope, even when this great poet collected his im- 
mortal works ; and in several other writers of the most 
elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes 
their happy successors to imitate, and inferior writers to con- , 
template with awe. 

There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the public 
and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self-dignity, will • 
not inspire any reverence in others ; and the ebriety of vanity 
will be sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the 



Style. 291 

dreams of self-love. If we dare not attempt the rambling 
prefaces of a Dry den, we may still entertain the reader, and 
soothe him into good-humour, for our own interest. This, 
perhaps, will be best obtained by making the preface (like the 
symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the 
work itself, to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.* 



STYLE. 






Eveet period of literature has its peculiar style, derived from 
some author of reputation ; and the history of a language, as 
an object of taste, might be traced through a collection of 
ample quotations from the most celebrated authors of each 
period. 

To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our 
present refinement, and it is with truth he observes of his 
" Eambler," " That he had laboured to refine our language to 
grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, 
licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and that he has 
added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony 
of its cadence." In this description of his own refinement in 
style and grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to 
the happy carelessness of Addison, whose charm of natural 
ease long afterwards he discovered. But great inelegance of 
diction disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, when 
the " Inquiry into the Life of Homer" was published. That 
author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, 
and his volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordi- 
nate affection for his work. This fanciful writer had a taste 
for polished writing, yet he abounds in expressions which now 
would be considered as impure in literary composition. Such 
vulgarisms are common — the Greeks fell to their old trade 
of one tribe expelling another — the scene is always at Athens, 
and all the pother is some little jilting story — the haughty 
Roman snuffed at the suppleness. If such diction had not 
been usual with good writers at that period, I should not 
have quoted Black wall. Middleton, in his " Life of Cicero," 
though a man of classical taste, and an historian of a classical 
era, could not preserve himself from colloquial inelegances ; 
the greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. 

See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., for an article on Prefaces. 

tj2 



292 Literary Miscellanies. 

Warburton, and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of 
that school, are loaded with familiar idioms, which at present 
would debase even the style of conversation. 

Such was the influence of the elaborate novelty of Johnson, 
that every writer in every class servilely copied the Latinised 
style, ludicrously mimicking the contortions and re-echoing 
the sonorous nothings of our great lexicographer ; the novelist 
of domestic life, or the agriculturist in a treatise on turnips, 
alike aimed at the polysyllabic force, and the cadenced period. 
Such was the condition of English style for more than twenty 
years. 

Some argue in favour of a natural style, and reiterate the 
opinion of many great critics that proper ideas will be accom- 
panied by proper words ; but though supported by the first 
authorities, they are not perhaps sufficiently precise in their 
definition. Writers may think justly, and yet write without 
any effect ; while a splendid style may cover a vacuity of 
thought. Does not this evident fact prove that style and 
thinking have not that inseparable connexion which many 
great writers have pronounced ? Milton imagined that beau- 
tiful thoughts produce beautiful expression. He says, 

Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers. 

"Writing is justly called an art ; and Rousseau says, it is not 
an art easily acquired. Thinking may be the foundation of 
style, but it is not the superstructure ; it is the marble of 
the edifice, but not its architecture. The art of presenting 
our thoughts to another, is often a process of considerable 
time and labour ; and the delicate task of correction, in the 
development of ideas, is reserved only for writers of fine taste. 
There are several modes of presenting an idea ; vulgar readers 
are only susceptible of the strong and palpable stroke : but 
there are many shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to 
paint is the pride and the labour of a skilful writer. A beau- 
tiful simplicity itself is a species of refinement, and no writer 
more solicitously corrected his works than Hume, who excels 
in this mode of composition. The philosopher highly ap- 
proves of Addison's definition of fine writing, who says, that 
it consists of sentiments which are natural, without being 
obvious. This is a definition of thought rather than of com- 
position. Shenstone has hit the truth ; for fine writing he 
defines to be generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and 



Style. 293 

a laboured style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, 
and he felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that 
" there is as much difference in apprehending a thought 
clothed in Cicero's language and that of a common author, as 
in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of 
the sun." 

Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather 
excite the admiration than the affection of a man of taste ; 
because their habitual art dissipates that illusion of sincerity, 
which we love to believe is the impulse which places the pen 
in the hand of an author. Two eminent literary mannerists 
are Cicero and Johnson. We know these great men consi- 
dered their eloquence as a deceptive art ; of any subject, it 
had been indifferent to them which side to adopt ; and in 
reading their elaborate works, our ear is more frequently 
gratified by the ambitious magnificence of their diction, than 
our heart penetrated by the pathetic enthusiasm of their senti- 
ments. Writers who are not mannerists, but who seize the 
appropriate tone of their subject, appear to feel a conviction of 
what they attempt to persuade their reader. It is observ- 
able, that it is impossible to imitate with uniform felicity 
the noble simplicity of a pathetic writer ; while the peculiari- 
ties of a mannerist are so far from being difficult, that they 
are displayed with nice exactness by middling writers, who, 
although their own natural manner had nothing interesting, 
have attracted notice by such imitations. We may apply to 
some monotonous mannerists these verses of Boileau : 

Voulez-vous du public meriter les amours? 
Sans cesse en ecrivant variez vos discours. 
On lit peu ces auteurs nes pour nous ennuier, 
Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier. 

Would you the public's envied favours gain ? 
Ceaseless, in writing, variegate the strain ; 
The heavy author, who the fancy calms, 
Seems in one tone to chant his nasal psalms. 

Every style is excellent, if it be proper ; and that style is 
most proper which can best convey the intentions of the 
author to his reader. And, after all, it is style alone by 
which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can 
have nothing truly his own but his style ; facts, scientific dis- 
coveries, and every kind of information, may be seized by all, 
but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence 
very learned writers have been neglected, while their learning 



294 Literary Miscellanies, 

has not been lost to the world, by having been given by- 
writers with more amenity. It is therefore the duty of an 
author to learn to write as well as to learn to think ; and 
this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his 
sensations, and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual 
faculties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous 
expressions which give a tone congruous to the subject, and 
which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty, 
and motion of lively perception. 



GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON. 

We should not censure artists and writers for their attach- 
ment to their favourite excellence. Who but an artist can 
value the ceaseless inquietudes of arduous perfection; can 
trace the remote possibilities combined in a close union ; 
the happy arrangement and the novel variation ? He not 
only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but 
is influenced by a peculiar sensation ; for while he contem- 
plates the apparent beauties, he traces in his own mind those 
invisible processes by which the final beauty was accom- 
plished. Hence arises that species of comparative criticism 
which one great author usually makes of his own manner 
with that of another great writer, and which so often causes 
him to be stigmatised with the most unreasonable vanity. 

The character of Goldsmith, so underrated in his own 
day, exemplifies this principle in the literary character. That 
pleasing writer, without any perversion of intellect or infla- 
tion of vanity, might have contrasted his powers with those 
of Johnson, and might, according to his own ideas, have 
considered himself as not inferior to his more celebrated and 
learned rival. 

Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own 
genius, which like a native stream flowed from a natural 
source, to the elaborate powers of Johnson, which in some 
respects may be compared to those artificial waters which 
throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble 
basins. He might have considered that he had embellished 
philosophy with poetical elegance; and have preferred the 
paintings of his descriptions, to the terse versification and the 
pointed sentences of Johnson. He might have been more 
pleased with the faithful representations of English manners 



Self-Characters. 295 

in his " Yicar of Wakefield," than with the borrowed grandeur 
and the exotic fancy of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have 
believed, what many excellent critics have believed, that in this 
age comedy requires more genius than tragedy ; and with his 
audience he might have infinitely more esteemed his own 
original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical declamation. He 
might have thought, that with inferior literature he displayed 
superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. Pie 
might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his 
pleasing compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual 
pomp, and that ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in the 
operose labours of Johnson. No one might be more sensible 
than himself, that he, according to the happy expression of 
Johnson (when his rival was in his grave), " tetigit et ornavit." 
Goldsmith, therefore, without any singular vanity, might 
have concluded, from his own reasonings, that he was not an 
inferior writer to Johnson : all this not having been consi- 
dered, he has come down to posterity as the vainest and the 
most jealous of writers ; he whose dispositions were the most 
inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most extensive, and 
whose amiableness of heart has been concealed by its artless- 
ness, and passed over in the sarcasms and sneers of a more 
eloquent rival, and his submissive partisans. 



SELF-CHARACTERS. 

Theee are two species of minor biography which may be dis- 
criminated ; detailing our own life and portraying our own 
character. The writing our own life has been practised with 
various success ; it is a delicate operation, a stroke too much 
may destroy the effect of the whole. If once we detect an 
author deceiving or deceived, it is a livid spot which infects 
the entire body. To publish one's own life has sometimes 
been a poor artifice to bring obscurity into notice ; it is the 
ebriety of vanity, and the delirium of egotism. When a great 
man leaves some memorial of his days, the grave consecrates 
the motive. There are certain things which relate to our- 
selves, which no one can know so well ; a great genius obliges 
posterity when he records them. But they must be com- 
posed with calmness, with simplicity, and with sincerity ; the 
biographic sketch of Hume, written by himself, is a model 
of Attic simplicity. The Life of Lord Herbert is a biogra. 



296 Literary Miscellanies. 

phical curiosity. The Memoirs of Sir William Jones, of 
Priestley, and of Gibbon, offer us the daily life of the 
student ; and those of Colley Cibber are a fine picture of the 
self-painter. We have some other pieces of self-biography, 
precious to the philosopher.* 

The other species of minor biograplry, that of portraying 
our own character, could only have been invented by the most 
refined and the vainest nation. The French long cherished 
this darling egotism; and have a collection of these self- 
portraits in two bulky volumes. The brilliant Flechier, and 
the refined St. Evremond, have framed and glazed their 
portraits. Every writer then considered his character as 
necessary as his preface. The fashion seems to have passed 
over to our country ; Farquhar has drawn his character in a 
letter to a lady; and others of our writers have given us 
their own miniatures. 

There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a certain 
verse-maker of the name of Cantenac, who, in 1662, published 
in the city of Paris a volume, containing some thousands of 
verses, which were, as his countrymen express it, de safagon, 
after his own way. He fell so suddenly into the darkest and 
deepest pit of oblivion, that not a trace of his memory would 
have remained, had he not condescended to give ample in- 
formation of every particular relative to himself. He has ac- 
quainted us with his size, and tells us, " that it is rare to see 
a man smaller than himself. I have that in common with all 
dwarfs, that if my head only were seen, I should be thought 
a large man." This atom in creation then describes his oval 
and full face ; his fiery and eloquent eyes : his vermil lips ; 
his robust constitution, and his effervescent passions. He 
appears to have been a most petulant, honest, and diminutive 
being. 

The description of his intellect is the object of our curiosity. 
"I am as ambitious as any person can be ; but I would not 
sacrifice my honour to my ambition. I am so sensible to 
contempt, that I bear a mortal and implacable hatred against 
those who contemn me, and I know I could never reconcile 
myself with them; but I spare no attentions for those I 
love ; I would give them my fortune and my life. I some- 
times lie; but generally in affairs of gallantry, where I volun- 

* One of the most interesting is that of Grifford, appended to his trans- 
lation of Juvenal ; it is a most remarkable record of the struggles of 
its author in early life, told with candour and simplicity. — Ed. 






Self-Characters. 297 

tarily confirm falsehoods by oaths, without reflection, for swear- 
ing with me is a habit. I am told that my mind is brilliant, 
and that I have a certain manner in turning a thought which 
is quite my own. I am agreeable in conversation, though I 
confess I am often troublesome ; for I maintain paradoxes to 
display my genius, which savour too much of scholastic sub- 
terfuges. I speak too often and too long ; and as I have 
some reading, and a copious memory, I am fond of showing 
whatever I know. My judgment is not so solid as my wit is 
lively. I am often melancholy and unhappy ; and this som- 
brous disposition proceeds from my numerous disappoint- 
ments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose ; and it has 
been of some use to me in pleasing the fair sex ; poetry is 
most adapted to persuade women ; but otherwise it has been 
of no service to me, and has, I fear, rendered me unfit for 
many advantageous occupations, in which I might have 
drudged. The esteem of the fair has, however, charmed 
away my complaints. This good fortune has been obtained 
by me, at the cost of many cares, and an unsubdued patience ; 
for I am one of those who, in affairs of love, will suffer an 
entire year, to taste the pleasures of one day." 

This character of Cantenac has some local features ; for an 
English poet would hardly console himself with so much 
gaiety. The Frenchman's attachment to the ladies seems to 
be equivalent to the advantageous occupations he had lost. 
But as the miseries of a literary man, without conspicuous 
talents, are always the same at Paris as in London, there are 
some parts of this character of Cantenac which appear to 
describe them with truth. Cantenac was a man of honour ; 
as warm in his resentment as his gratitude ; but deluded by 
literary vanity, he became a writer in prose and verse, and 
while he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably 
considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy example 
for certain volatile and fervent spirits, who, by becoming 
authors, either submit their felicity to the caprices of others, 
or annihilate the obscure comforts of life, and, like him, 
having " been told that their mind is brilliant, and that they 
have a certain manner in turning a thought," become writers, 
and complain that they are " often melancholy, owing to their 
numerous disappointments." Happy, however, if the obscure, 
yet too sensible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoy- 
ment of a single day ! But for this, a man must have been 
born in France. 



298 



ON READING. 



Writing is justly denominated an art ; I think that reading 
claims the same distinction. To adorn ideas with elegance is 
an act of the mind superior to that of receiving them ; but 
to receive them with a happy discrimination is the effect of 
a practised taste. 

Yet it will be found that taste alone is not sufficient to 
obtain the proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste 
rise from the perusal of the same book with very different 
notions : the one will have the ideas of the author at com- 
mand, and find a new train of sentiment awakened ; while 
the other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of 
the pleasures of reading nothing remains but tumultuous 
sensations. 

To account for these different effects, we must have recourse 
to a logical distinction, which appears to reveal one of the 
great mysteries in the art of reading. Logicians distinguish 
between perceptions and ideas. Perception is that faculty of 
the mind which notices the simple impression of objects : but 
when these objects exist in the mind, and are there treasured 
and arranged as materials for reflection, then they are called 
ideas. A perception is like a transient sunbeam, which just 
shows the object, but leaves neither light nor warmth ; while 
an idea is like the fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled 
and powerful light. 

Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is de- 
fective, and their studies unfruitful. This defect arises from 
their indulging the facile pleasures of perceptions, in preference 
to the laborious habit of forming them into ideas. Perceptions 
require only the sensibility of taste, and their pleasures are 
continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas are an art of com- 
bination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers. Ideas are 
therefore labours ; and for those who will not labour, it is un- 
just to complain, if the} 7 " come from the harvest with scarcely 
a sheaf in their hands. 

There are secrets in the art of reading which tend to 
facilitate its purposes, by assisting the memory, and aug- 
menting intellectual opulence. Some our own ingenuity 
must form, and perhaps every student has peculiar habits of 
study, as, in sort-hand, almost every writer has a system of 
his own. 



On Reading. 299 

It is an observation of the elder Pliny (who, having been 
a voluminous compiler, must have had great experience in the 
art of reading), that there was no book so bad but which 
contained something good. To read every book would, how- 
ever, be fatal to the interest of most readers ; but it is not 
always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every 
book entire. Of mauy books it is sufficient to seize the plan, 
and to examine some of their portions. Of the little supple- 
ment at the close of a volume, few readers conceive the 
utility ; but some of the most eminent writers in Europe 
have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, for 
my part, venerate the inventor of indexes ; and I know not 
to whom to yield the preference, either to Hippocrates, who 
was the first great anatomiser of the human body, or to that 
unknown labourer in literature, who first laid open the nerves 
and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the 
prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on 
its contents. 

The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is expressed 
in a strong metaphor by Mrs. Knowles, who said, " he knows 
how to read better than any one ; he gets at the substance of 
a book directly : he tears out the heart of it." Gibbon has 
a new idea in the "Art of Keading ;" he says "we ought 
not to attend to the order of our books so much as of our 
thoughts. The perusal of a particular work gives birth per- 
haps to ideas unconnected with the subject it treats ; I pur- 
sue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of reading." Thus 
in the midst of Homer he read Longinus ; a chapter of Longi- 
nus led to an epistle of Pliny ; and having finished Longinus, 
he followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful 
in the " Enquiry " of Burke, and concluded by comparing 
the ancient with the modern Longinus. 

There are some mechanical aids in reading whicb may 
prove of great utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence of 
our early studies. Montaigne placed at the end of a book 
which he intended not to reperuse, the time he had read it, 
with a concise decision on its merits ; "that," says he, "it 
may thus represent to me the air and general idea I had con- 
ceived of the author, in reading the work." We have several 
of these annotations. Of Young the poet it is noticed, that 
whenever he came to a striking passage he folded the leaf; 
and that at his death, books have been found in his library 
which had long resisted the power of closing : a mode more 



300 Literary Miscellanies. 

easy than useful ; for after a length of time they must be 
again read to know why they were folded. This difficulty is 
obviated by those who note in a blank leaf the pages to be 
referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider 
these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds : 
by these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may 
learning obtain its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. 
Seneca, in sending some volumes to his friend Lucilius, accom- 
panies them with notes of particular passages, " that," he 
observes, " you who only aim at the useful may be spared the 
trouble of examining them entire." I have seen books noted 
by Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page 
itself, which was his usual practice ; and these volumes are 
precious to every man of taste. Formey complained that the 
books he lent Voltaire were returned always disfigured by his 
remarks ; but he was a writer of the old school.* 

A professional student should divide his readings into a 
uniform reading which is useful, and into a diversified read- 
ing which is pleasant. Cruy Fatin, an eminent physician and 
man of letters, had a just notion of this manner. He says, 
" I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fern el, and other illustrious 
masters of my profession ; this I call my profitable readings. 
I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and 
others, and these are my recreations." We must observe 
these distinctions ; for it frequently happens that a lawyer or 
a physician, with great industry and love of study, by giving 
too much into his diversified readings, may utterly neglect 
what should be his uniform studies. 

A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal 
car of an author of great celebrity ; and when he ventures 
not to judge for himself, conceives> while he is reading the 
indifferent works of great authors, that the languor which he 
experiences arises from his own defective taste. But the best 
writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of 
mediocrity. 

On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the 
pleasures of composition depend on the author, for there is 
something which a reader 'himself must bring to the book that 
the book may please. There is a literary appetite, which the 
author can no more impart than the most skilful cook can 

* The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume of 
the "Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the value 
of such disfigurations when the work of certain hands. — Ed. 



On Reading. 301 

give an appetency to the guests. "When Cardinal Richelieu 
said to G-odeau, that he did not understand his verses, the 
honest poet replied that it was not his fault. The temporary 
tone of the mind may be unfavourable to taste a work pro- 
perly, and we have had many erroneous criticisms from great 
men, which may often be attributed to this circumstance. 
The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book, 
and an author has not only his own defects to account for, 
but also those of his reader. There is something in compo- 
sition like the game of shuttlecock, where if the reader do not 
quickly rebound the feathered cock to the author, the game 
is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work falls extinct. 

A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the 
mind to settle on the subject ; agitated by incongruous and 
dissimilar ideas, it is with pain that we admit those of the 
author. But on applying ourselves with a gentle violence to 
the perusal of an interesting work, the mind soon assimilates 
to the subject ; the ancient rabbins advised their young stu- 
dents to apply themselves to their readings, whether they 
felt an inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they 
would find their disposition restored and their curiosity 
awakened. 

Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divi- 
sions ; but an author is a solitary being, who, for the same 
reason he pleases one, must consequently displease another. 
To have too exalted a genius is more prejudicial to his 
celebrity than to have a moderate one ; for we shall find that 
the most popular works are not the most profound, but 
such as instruct those who require instruction, and 
charm those who are not too learned to taste their 
novelty. Lucilius, the satirist, said, that he did not write for 
Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for their 
science, but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the 
Sicilians. Montaigne has complained that he found his 
readers too learned, or too ignorant, and that he could only 
please a middle class, who have just learning enough to com- 
prehend him. Congreve says, ' ; there is in true beauty some- 
thing which vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains 
bitterly of readers, — "A period," he cries, " shall have cost 
us the labour of a day ; we shall have distilled into an essay 
the essence of our mind ; it may be a finished piece of art ; 
and they think they are indulgent when they pronounce it 
to contain some pretty things, and that the style is not bad !" 



302 Literary Miscellanies. 

There is something in exquisite composition which ordinary 
readers can never understand. 

Authors are vain, but readers are capricious. Some will 
only read old books, as if there were no valuable truths 
to be discovered in modern publications ; while others will 
only read new books, as if some valuable truths are not among 
the old. Some will not read a book, because they are 
acquainted with the author ; by which the reader may be 
more injured than the author : others not only read the book, 
but would also read the man ; by which the most ingenious 
author may be injured by the most impertinent reader. 



ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL 
PURSUIT. 

Two things in human life are at continual variance, and with- 
out escaping from the one we must be separated from the 
other ; and these are ennui and pleasure. Ennui is an 
afflicting sensation, if we may thus express it, from a want of 
sensation ; and pleasure is greater pleasure according to the 
quantity of sensation. That sensation is received in propor- 
tion to the capacity of our organs ; and that practice, or, 
as it has been sometimes called, "educated feeling," enlarges 
this capacity, is evident in such familiar instances as those of 
the blind, who have a finer tact, and the jeweller, who has a 
finer sight, than other men who are not so deeply interested 
in refining their vision and their touch. Intense attention is, 
therefore, a certain means of deriving more numerous plea- 
sures from its object. 

Hence it is that the poet, long employed on a poem, has 
received a quantity of pleasure which no reader can ever feel. 
In the progress of any particular pursuit, there are a hun- 
dred fugitive sensations which are too intellectual to be em- 
bodied into language. Every artist knows that between the 
thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which 
appears in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescences 
of sensation which no man felt but himself. These pleasures 
are in number according to the intenseness of his faculties 
and the quantity of his labour. 

It is so in any particular pursuit, from the manufacturing 
of pins to the construction of philosophical systems. Every 
individual can exert that quantity of mind necessary to his 
wants and adapted to his situation ; the quality of pleasure is 



Habituating Ourselves to an Individual Pursuit. 303 

nothing in the present question : for I think that we are mis- 
taken concerning the gradations of human felicity. It does 
at first appear, that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while 
he gazes on a star, must feel a more exquisite delight than a 
farmer who is conducting his team ; or a poet experience a 
higher gratification in modulating verses than a trader in 
arranging sums. But the happiness of the ploughman 
and the trader may be as satisfactory as that of the 
astronomer and the poet. Our mind can only be con- 
versant with those sensations which surround us, and pos- 
sessing the skill of managing them, we can form an arti- 
ficial felicity ; it is certain that what the soul does not feel, no 
more affects it than what the eye does not see. It is thus 
that the trader, habituated to humble pursuits, can never be 
unhappy because he is not the general of an army ; for this 
idea of felicity he has never received. The philosopher who 
gives his entire years to the elevated pursuits of mind, is 
never unhappy because he is not in possession of an Indian 
opulence, for the idea of accumulating this exotic splendour 
has never entered the range of his combinations. Nature, an 
impartial mother, renders felicity as perfect in the school-boy 
who scourges his top, as in the astronomer who regulates his 
star. The thing contained can only be equal to the container ; a 
full glass is as full as a full bottle ; and a human soul may be as 
much satisfied in the lowest of human beings as in the highest. 

In the progress of an individual pursuit, what philosophers 
call the associating or suggesting idea is ever busied, and in 
its beautiful effects genius is most deeply concerned ; for be- 
sides those trains of thought the great artist falls into durino- 
his actual composition, a distinct habit accompanies real 
genius through life in the activity of his associating idea, when 
not at his work ; it is at all times pressing and conducting his 
spontaneous thoughts, and every object which suggests them, 
however apparently trivial or unconnected towards itself 
making what it wills its own, while instinctively it seems in- 
attentive to whatever has no tendency to its own purposes. 

Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of one 
master passion or occupation. In superior minds it is a 
sovereign that exiles others, and in inferior minds it enfeebles 
pernicious propensities. It may render us useful to our fellow- 
citizens, and it imparts the most perfect independence to our- 
selves. It is observed by a great mathematician, that a 
geometrician would not be unhappy in a desert. 



304 Literary Miscellanies. 

This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws all the 
rays of our existence ; and often, when accident has turned the 
mind firmly to one object, it has been discovered that its oc- 
cupation is another name for happiness ; for it is a mean of 
escaping from incongruous sensations. It secures us from the 
dark vacuity of soul, as well as from the whirlwind of ideas ; 
reason itself is a passion, but a passion full of serenity. 

It is, however, observable of those who have devoted them- 
selves to an individual object, that its importance is incredibly 
enlarged to their sensations. Intense attention magnifies like 
a microscope ; but it is possible to apologise for their apparent 
extravagance from the consideration, that they really observe 
combinations not perceived by others of inferior application. 
That this passion has been carried to a curious violence of 
affection, literary history affords numerous instances. In 
reading Dr. Burney's " Musical Travels," it would seem that 
music was the prime object of human life ; Richardson, the 
painter, in his treatise on his beloved art, closes all by affirm- 
ing, that " Raphael is not only equal, but superior to a Virgil, 
or a Livy, or a Thucydides, or a Homer V and that painting 
can reform our manners, increase our opulence, honour, and 
power. Denina, in his "Revolutions of Literature," tells us 
that to excel in historical composition requires more ability 
than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art ; 
because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagi- 
nation, and taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philoso- 
pher, but the historian must also have some peculiar qualifi- 
cations ; this served as a prelude to his own history. # 
Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts and polite literature, 
has composed a poem on Happiness ; and imagines that it 
consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and 
the arts. All this shows that the more intensely we attach 
ourselves to an individual object, the more numerous and the 
more perfect are our sensations ; if we yield to the distracting 
variety of opposite pursuits with an equal passion, our soul 
is placed amid a continual shock of ideas, and happiness is 
lost by mistakes. 

* One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the Preface to 
the late Peter Buchans annotated edition of "Ancient Ballads and Songs 
of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which he declares 
— "no one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind of man, what 
patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are necessary for an editor 
of a Collection of Ancient Ballads." — Ed. 



305 



ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE. 

"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyere; but at the 
same moment, by his own admirable Reflections, confutes the 
dreary system he would establish. An opinion of the ex- 
hausted state of literature has been a popular prejudice of 
remote existence ; and an unhappy idea of a wise ancient, who, 
even in his day, lamented that " of books there is no end," 
has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically 
examined any branch of literature has discovered how little of 
original invention is to be found even in the most excellent 
works. To add a little to his predecessors satisfies the ambi- 
tion of the first geniuses. The popular notion of literary 
novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are yet 
to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mis- 
take them to be ; that the plans of the most original perform- 
ances have been borrowed ; and that the thoughts of the most 
admired compositions are not wonderful discoveries, but only 
truths, which the ingenuity of the author, by arranging the 
intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that con- 
fused sentiment, which those experience who are not accus- 
tomed to think with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. 
This Novelty in Literature is, as Pope defines it, 

"What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express' d. 

Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any 
judicious production. 

Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes 
that the most original writers borrowed one from another, 
and says that the instruction we gather from books is like 
fire — we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, and 
communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of all. 
He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountain- 
head ; and the reader smiles when he perceives that they have 
travelled in regular succession through China, India, Arabia, 
and Greece, to France and to England. 

To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that 
originality in which they are imagined to excel, but we know 
how frequently they accuse each other ; and to have borrowed 
copiously from preceding writers was not considered criminal 
by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The iEneid 

x 



306 Literary Miscellanies. 

of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites 
the plan of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

Our own early writers have not more originality than 
modern genius may aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival 
the Italians and the French formed their devotion. Chaucer, 
Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all spirited imitators, and 
frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the father of 
so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. 
Milton is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. 
In the beautiful Masque of Comus he preserved all the cir- 
cumstances of the work he imitated. Tasso opened for him 
the Tartarean Gulf ; the sublime description of the bridge 
may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish 
theology ; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted 
from the wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a 
wonderful tissue, woven on the frames, and composed with 
the gold threads, of others. To Cervantes we owe Butler ; 
and the united abilities of three great wits, in their Martinus 
Scriblerus, could find no other mode of conveying their powers 
but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle. 
Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his 
pay ; the contributions he levied were not the pillages of a 
bandit, but the taxes of a monarch. Swift is much indebted 
for the plans of his two very original performances : he owes 
the " Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages of Cyrano de 
Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the 
acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy ; Joseph Warton 
has observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's 
"Man in the Moon," who, in his turn, must have borrowed 
his work from Cyrano. " The Tale of a Tub " is an imita- 
tion of such various originals, that they are too numerous 
here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many 
places the author's wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay 
on the Imitations of Sterne " might be considerably aug- 
mented. Such are the writers, however, who imitate, but 
remain inimitable ! 

Montaigne, with honest naivete, compares his writings to 
a thread that binds the flowers of others ; and that, by in- 
cessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors into 
his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good old man 
elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his own 
invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from 
the ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might 



On Novelty in Literature. 307 

blunder, by giving nazardes to Seneca and Plutarch, while 
they imagined they tweaked his nose. Petrarch, who is not 
the inventor of that tender poetry of which he is the model, 
and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists, have alike 
profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only 
read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo 
has imitated Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of 
Orlando Furioso, though it wears, by its extravagance, a very 
original air, is only imitated from Sir Launcelot in the old 
romance of " Morte Arthur," with which, Warton observes, it 
agrees in every leading circumstance ; and what is the Cardenio 
of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto ? Tasso has imitated 
the Iliad, and enriched his poem with episodes from the 
jhnieid. It is curious to observe that even Dante, wild and 
original as he appears, when he meets Virgil in the Inferno, 
warmly expresses his gratitude for the many fine passages for 
which he was indebted to his works, and on which he says he 
had " long meditated." Moliere and La Fontaine are con- 
sidered to possess as much originality as any of the French 
writers ; yet the learned Menage calls Moliere " un grand et 
habile picoreur ;" and Boileau tells us that La Fontaine bor- 
rowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais, and 
took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor 
was the eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his bur- 
lesque narratives ; and he is a very close imitator of Folengo, 
the inventor of the macaronic poetry, and not a little indebted 
to the old Facezie of the Italians. Indeed Marot, Villon, as 
well as those we have noticed, profited by the authors anterior 
to the age of Francis I. La Bruyere incorporates whole 
passages of Publius Syr us in his work, as the translator of 
the latter abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was 
Montesquieu beholden for his " Persian Letters," and a 
numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu. Corneille 
made a liberal use of Spanish literature ; and the pure waters 
of Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euri- 
pides. 

This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our 
greatest authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the 
first writers to bankers who are rich with the assembled for- 
tunes of individuals, and would be often ruined were they too 
hardly drawn on. 



x2 



308 



VERS DE SOCIETE. 

Plots", in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix 
among his severer studies the softening charms of poetry ; 
and notices a species of poetical composition which merits 
critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in the language 
of his elegant translator. He says, " These pieces commonly 
go under the title of poetical amusements ; but these amuse- 
ments have sometimes gained as much reputation to their 
authors as works of a more serious nature. It is surprising 
how much the mind is entertained and enlivened by these 
little poetical compositions, as they turn upon subjects of 
gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in 
short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world." 

This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost per- 
fection by the French. It has been discriminated by them, 
from the mass of poetry, under the apt title of " Poesies 
legeres" and sometimes it has been significantly called " Vers 
de Societe." The French writers have formed a body of this 
fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival ; and to 
which both the language and genius appear to be greatly 
favourable. 

The "Poesies legeres" are not merely compositions of a 
light and gay turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for 
tender and pathetic sentiment. They are never long, for they 
are consecrated to the amusement of society. The author 
appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not for his 
glory ; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless 
of their approbation. 

Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of 
expression, and every tenderness of thought must be softened 
by the tenderest tones. Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble 
and chill the imagination ; nor must the ear be denied its 
gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these works 
nothing is pardoned ; a word may disturb, a line may destroy 
the charm. 

The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. 
It is in these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his 
tastes, his desires, his humours, his amours, and even his de- 
fects. In other poems the poet disappears under the feigned 
character he assumes ; here alone he speaks, here he acts. He 
makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in his hopes and 



Vers de Societe. 309 

his sorrows ; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteem- 
ing the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a 
compliment to a patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of 
gratitude. 

These poems have often, with great success, displayed pic- 
tures of manners ; for here the poet colours the objects with 
all the hues of social life. Reflection must not be amplified, 
for these are pieces devoted to the fancy ; a scene may be 
painted throughout the poem ; a sentiment-must be conveyed 
in a verse. In the " (xrongar Hill" of Dyer we discover 
some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. 
The poet, contemplating the distant landscape, observes — 

A step methinks may pass the stream, 
So little distant dangers seem ; 
So we mistake the future's face, 
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass. 

It must not be supposed that, because these poems are con- 
cise, they are of easy production ; a poet's genius may not be 
diminutive because his pieces are so ; nor must we call them, 
as a fine sonnet has been called, a difficult trifle. A circle 
may be very small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful 
and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions we may 
apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little 
thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing. 

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the 
world as with the studies of taste ; one to whom labour is 
negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature. 

G-enius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of 
amenity. Many of the French nobility, who cultivated 
poetiy, have therefore oftener excelled in these poetical 
amusements than more professed poets. France once de- 
lighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, 
Boufflers, and St. Aignan ; they have not been considered as 
unworthy rivals of Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and 
Gresset. 

All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are 
compositions of this kind ; effusions of the heart, and pictures 
of the imagination, which were produced in the convivial, the 
amatory, and the pensive hour. Our nation has not always 
been successful in these performances ; they have not been 
kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a 
gayer and more airy taste was communicated to our poetry, 
but it was desultory and incorrect. Waller, both by his 



310 Literary Miscellanies. 

habits and his genius, was well adapted to excel in this lighter 
poetry ; and he has often attained the perfection which the 
state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of 
sallies ; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versifica- 
tion is sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these 
charming pieces, and he had drunk of this Burgundy in the 
vineyard itself. He has some translations, and some pla- 
giarisms ; but some of his verses to Chloe are eminently airl- 
and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry 
might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems ; 
but the " Vers de Societe" form a species of poetical composi- 
tion which may still be employed with great success. 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 

The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but 
appears different among different people. Manners and cus- 
toms not only vary among European nations, but are alike 
mutable from one age to another, even in the same people. 
These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers ; our old 
school of comedy has been swept off the stage : and our pre- 
sent uniformity of manners has deprived our modern writers 
of those rich sources of invention when persons living more 
isolated, society was less monotonous ; and Jonson and 
Shadwell gave us what they called " the humours" — that is, 
the individual or particular characteristics of men.* 

But however tastes and modes of thinking may be incon- 
stant, and customs and manners alter, at bottom the ground- 
work is Nature's, in every production of comic genius. A 
creative genius, guided by an unerring instinct, though he 

* Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists, when 
speaking of Shakspeare he says — "The humour of the constable in 
A Midsummer Night's Bream, he happened to take at Grrendon in Bucks ; 
which, is the roade from London to Stratford ; and there was living that 
constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did 
gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose 
best plays were produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed 
imitator of the style of Jonson ; and so closely described the manners of 
his day that he was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged 
to alter one of his plays, The Humorists, to avoid an outcry raised 
against him. Sir Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "For- 
tunes of Nigel," the obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, The 
Squire of Alsatia, for the vivid description it enabled him to give of the 
lawless denizens of the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars. — Ed. 



The Genius of Moliere. 31.1 

draws after the contemporary models of society, will retain 
his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation ; 
what was temporary and local disappears, but what appertains 
to universal nature endures. The scholar dwells on the 
grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic Aristophanes, though 
the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have long 
vanished. 

Moliere was a creator in the art of comedy ; and although 
his personages were the contemporaries of Louis the Four- 
teenth, and his manners, in the critical acceptation of the 
term, local and temporary, yet his admirable genius opened 
that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among 
the great names of the most literary nations. Cervantes 
remains single in Spain ; in England Shae:speare is a con- 
secrated name ; and centuries may pass away before the 
French people shall witness another Moliere. 

The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful 
genius creating itself amidst the most adverse elements. We 
have the progress of that self-education which struck out an 
untried path of its own, from the time Moliere had not yet 
acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his country 
a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a 
Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, 
and the disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confi- 
dence, and, what was not less extraordinary, his own domestic 
life in perpetual conflict with his character, open a more 
strange career, in some respects, than has happened to most 
others of the high order of his genius. 

It was long the fate of Moliere to experience that restless 
importunity of genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the 
pabulum it seeks. Moliere not only suffered that tormenting 
impulse, but it was accompanied by the unhappiness of a mis- 
taken direction. And this has been the lot of some who for 
many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the 
public. 

A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown 
among the itinerant companies of actors — for France had not 
yet a theatre — occupied to his last hours by too devoted a 
management of his own dramatic corps ; himself, too, an ori- 
ginal actor in the characters by himself created ; with no 
better models of composition than the Italian farces alV im- 
provista, and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too 
well ; becomes the personal favourite of the most magnificent 



312 Literary Miscellanies. 

monarch, and the intimate of the most refined circles. 
Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new personages, 
he sports with the affected precieuses and the nattering mar- 
quises as with the naive ridiculousness of the bourgeois, and 
the wild pride and egotism of the parvenus ; and with more 
profound designs and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures 
of false pretenders in all professions. His scenes, such was 
their verity, seem but the reflections of his reminiscences. 
His fertile facility when touching on transient follies ; his 
wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more 
elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and 
the philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. 
Moliere has shown that the most successful reformer of the 
manners of a people is a great comic poet. 
4. -^The youth Pocquelin — this was his family name — was de- 
signed by the tapissier, his father, to be the heir of the 
hereditary honours of an ancient standing, which had main- 
tained the Pocquelins through four or five generations by the 
articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His grandfather was a 
haunter of the small theatres of that day, and the boy often 
accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his favourite 
recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than 
their pieces ; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfec- 
tion of eloquent gesticulation. In these loose scenes of 
inartificial and burlesque pieces was the genius of Moliere 
cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the Theatre de 
Bourgogne deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great 
detriment of the tapisserie of all the Pocquelins. 

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy re- 
monstrated till, at fourteen years of age, he was consigned, 
as "un mauvais sujet" (so his father qualified him), to a 
college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the author of the 
" Tartuffe" passed five years, studying — for the bar ! 

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank ; 
and sprinklings of his college studies often pointed the satire 
of his more finished comedies. To ridicule false learning and 
false taste one must be intimate with the true. 

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out 
at the representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the 
Italian theatre. The irresistible passion drove him from his 
law studies, and cast young Pocquelin among a company of 
amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them not to play 
gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, 



The Genius of Moliere. 313 

for under his studious eye this company were induced to 
imitate Nature with the simplicity the poet himself wrote. 

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religions, had 
made these private theatres — no great national theatre yet 
existing — the resource only of the idler, the dissipated, and 
even of the unfortunate in society. The youthful adventurer 
affectionately offered a free admission to the dear Pocquelins. 
They rejected their entrees with horror, and sent their genea- 
logical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had 
wantoned into the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour 
of the parental upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself 
under the immortal name of Moliere. 

The future creator of French comedy had now passed his 
thirtieth year, and as yet his reputation was confined to his 
own dramatic corps — a pilgrim in the caravan of ambulatory 
comedy. He had provided several temporary novelties. 
Boileau regretted the loss of one, Le Docteur Amoureux ; 
and in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of 
his future pieces. The severe judgment of Moliere suffered 
his skeletons to perish ; but, when he had discovered the art 
of comic writing, with equal discernment he resuscitated 
them. 

Not only had Moliere not yet discovered the true bent of 
his genius, but, still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mis- 
taken it as when he proposed turning avocat, for he imagined 
that his most suitable character was tragic. He wrote a 
tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy ; the tragedy he composed 
was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to 
Grenoble ; still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy ; he 
looked on it with paternal eyes, in which there were tears. 
Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered him a very unact- 
able tragedy,* Moliere presented him with his own : — " Take 
this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic, 
notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of 
France opened his career by recomposing the condemned 
tragedy of the comic wit in La Theha'ide. In the illusion 

* The tragedy written by Racine was called Theagene et Chariclee, and 
founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first attempt of its author, 
and submitted by him to Moliere, while director of the Theatre of the 
Palais Royal ; the latter had no favourable impression of its success if 
produced, but suggested La Thebaide as a subject for his genius, and 
advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his work, which was 
successfully produced in 1664. — Ed. 



314 Literary Miscellanies. 

that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by his own sus- 
ceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he 
acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the 
alarm of a rival company on the announcement. It was not, 
however, so when the author-actor vivified one of his own 
native personages ; then, inimitably comic, every new repre- 
sentation seemed to be a new creation. 

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular 
one, in the character of this great comic writer, that he was 
one of the most serious of men, and even of a melancholic 
temperament. One of his lampooners wrote a satirical 
comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as " Moliere 
hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily 
characterised Moliere as le Contemplateur . This deep pen- 
siveness is revealed in his physiognomy. 

The genius of Moliere, long undiscovered by himself, in its 
first attempts in a higher walk did not move alone ; it was 
crutched by imitation, and it often deigned to plough with 
another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from Italian come- 
dies and plots from Italian novelists : his sole merit was their 
improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was 
to people the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live 
on to posterity, had not yet struck at that secret vein of ori- 
ginality — the fairy treasure which one day was to cast out 
such a prodigality of invention. His two first comedies, 
L'Etourdi and Le Depit Amoureux, which he had only ven- 
tured to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on 
Italian and Spanish comedy. Nothing more original offered 
to his imagination than the Roman, the Italian, and the 
Spanish drama ; the cunning adroit slave of Terence ; the 
tricking, bustling Gracioso of modern Spain ; old fathers, the 
dupes of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with 
lovers sighing at cross-purposes. The germ of his future 
powers may, indeed, be discovered in these two comedies, for 
insensibly to himself he had fallen into some scenes of 
natural simplicity. In X' Etoardi, Mascarille, " le roi des 
serviteurs," which Moliere himself admirably personated, is 
one of those defunct characters of the Italian comedy no 
longer existing in society ; jet, like our Touchstone, but infi- 
nitely richer, this new ideal personage still delights by the 
fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and vigorous 
gaiety. In Le Lepit Amoureux is the exquisite scene of the 
quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, 



Th e Genius of Moliere . 315 

though perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode 
.of Horace, Donee gratus eram tibi, Moliere consulted his own 
feelings, and betrayed his future genius. 

It was after an interval of three or four years that the 
provincial celebrity of these comedies obtained a representa- 
tion at Paris ; their success was decisive. This was an evi- 
dence of public favour which did not accompany Moliere's 
more finished productions, which were so far unfortunate 
that they were more intelligible to the few ; in fact, the first 
comedies of Moliere were not written above the popular 
taste ; the spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of 
the heart of man, and in the delicate discriminations of indi- 
vidual character, was yet unknown. Moliere was satisfied to 
excel his predecessors, but he had not yet learned his art. 

The rising poet was now earnestly sought after ; a more 
extended circle of society now engaged his contemplative 
habits. He looked around on living scenes no longer through 
the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he projected a new 
species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional 
grotesque personages and its forced incidents ; he aspired to 
please a more critical audience by making his dialogue the 
conversation of society, and his characters its portraits. 

Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet, a new view opened on the favoured poet. To 
occupy a seat in this envied circle was a distinction in 
society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility and 
literary persons, at the hotel of the Marchioness of Ram- 
bouillet, was to give a higher tone to all France, by the cul- 
tivation of the language, the intellectual refinement of their 
compositions, and last, but not least, to inculcate the ex- 
tremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil dissensions 
had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness 
prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. 
This critical circle was composed of both sexes. They were 
to be the arbiters of taste, the legislators of criticism, and, 
what was less tolerable, the models of genius. No work 
was to be stamped into currency which bore not the mint- 
mark of the hotel. 

In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has pre- 
sented a more instructive and amusing exhibition of the 
abuses of learning, and the aberrations of ill- regulated ima- 
ginations, than the Hotel de Rambouillet, by its ingenious 
absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the language, 



316 Literary Miscellanies. 

the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every 
species of false refinement ; their science ran into trivial pe- 
dantries, their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spi- 
ritualising delicacy into the very puritanism of prudery. 
Their frivolous distinction between the mind and the heart, 
which could not always be made to go together, often per- 
plexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not 
always intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Aca- 
demy is said to have originated in the first meetings of the 
Hotel de Eambouillet ; and it is probable that some sense and 
taste, in its earliest days, may have visited this society, for 
we do not begin such refined follies without some show of 
reason. 

The local genius of the hotel was feminine, though the 
most glorious men of the literature of France were among 
its votaries. The great magnet was the famed Mademoiselle 
Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code ; and it 
is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened 
conversaziones. In the novel system of gallantry of this 
great inventor of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the 
ladies were to be approached as beings nothing short of 
celestial paragons ; they were addressed in a language not to 
be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits 
were more fantastic than their language : a sort of domestic 
chivalrjr formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were 
to them profane, and their assumed ones were drawn from 
the folio romances — those Bibles of love. At length all 
ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had its 
graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the 
mysteries was not permitted to prolong his existence — that 
is, his residence among them. The apprenticeship of the 
craft was to be served under certain Introducers to Buelles. 

Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an 
enigma, which served as a subject to open conversation. The 
lady received her visitors reposing on that throne of beauty, a 
bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was magnificently ar- 
ranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called 
the Huelle* the diminutive of la Hue ; and in this narrow 
street, or "Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the 

* In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the changes 
to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of the 
great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the ruelle, as described 
above : it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic life. — Ed. 



The Genius of Moliere. 317 

chevalier who was graced by the honorary title of VAJco- 
viste, was at once master of the household and master of the 
ceremonies. His character is pointedly denned by St. Evre- 
mond, as " a lover whom the Precieuse is to love without 
enjoyment, and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with 
aversion." The scene offered no indecency to such delicate 
minds, and much less the impassioned style which passed be- 
tween les clieres, as they called themselves. Whatever offered 
an idea, of what their jargon denominated chamelle, was 
treason and exile. Tears passed ere the hand of the elected 
maiden was kissed by its martyr. The celebrated Julia 
d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de Montausier, but 
fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a " yes." When 
the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke 
gratefully took up the remains of her beauty. 

Their more curious project was the reform of the style of 
conversation, to purify its grossness, and invent novel terms 
for familiar objects. Menage drew up a " Petition of the 
Dictionaries," which, by their severity of taste, had nearly 
become superannuated. They succeeded better with the 
marchandes des modes and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabu- 
lary excessively p-reciease, by which people bought their old 
wares with new names. At length they were so successful 
in their neology, that with great difficulty they understood 
one another. It is, however, worth observation, that the 
orthography invented by the precieuses — who, for their con- 
venience, rejected all the redundant letters in words — was 
adopted, and is now used ; and their pride of exclusiveness in 
society introduced the singular term s'encanailler, to describe 
a person who haunted low company, while then* morbid purity 
had ever on their lips the word ooscenite, terms which Moliere 
ridicules, but whose expressiveness has preserved them in the 
language. 

Eidiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to 
us, they had been so closely interwoven with the elegance of 
the higher ranks, and so intimately associated with genius 
and literature, that the veil of fashion consecrated almost the 
mystical society, since we find among its admirers the most 
illustrious names of France. 

Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youth- 
ful and unsophisticated- poet was now thrown, with a mind 
not vitiated by any prepossessions of false taste, studious of 
nature and alive to the ridiculous. But how was the comic 



318 Literary Miscellanies. 

genius to strike at the follies of Lis illustrious friends — to 
strike, but not to wound ? A provincial poet and aetor to 
enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives ? 
Tormented by his genius Moliere produced Les Rrecieuses 
Ridicules, but admirably parried, in his preface, any appli- 
cation to them, by averring that it was aimed at their imi- 
tators — their spurious mimics in the country. The JPre- 
cieuses 'Ridicules was acted in the presence of the assembled 
Hotel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central 
voice from the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the 
fame of the reformer of comedy, exclaimed, " Take courage, 
Moliere, this is true comedy." The learned Menage was the 
only member of the society who had the good sense to detect 
the drift ; he perceived the snake in the grass. " We must 
now," said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the 
fate of idolatry and the introduction of Christianity) to the 
poetical pedant, Chapelain, " follow the counsel which St. 
B,6mi gave to Clovis — we must burn all that we adored, and 
adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy 
was universal ; the company doubled their prices ; the coun- 
try gentry flocked to witness the marvellous novelty, which 
far exposed that false taste, that romance-impertinence, and 
that sickly affectation which had long disturbed the quiet of 
families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish 
rodomontade. 

At this universal reception of the Rrecieuses Ridicules, 
Moliere, it is said, exclaimed — " I need no longer study 
Plautus and Terence, nor poach in the fragments of Menan- 
der; I have only to study the world." It may be doubtful 
whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the 
sudden revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his 
Tartuffe, his Misanthrope, his Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and 
others. The Rrecieuses Ridicules was the germ of his more 
elaborate F&mmes Savantes, which was not produced till after 
an interval of twelve years. 

Moliere returned to his old favourite canevas, or plots of 
Italian farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being 
always at hand, furnished comedies of intrigue. ISEcole des 
Maris is an inimitable model of this class. 

But comedies which derive their chief interest from the 
ingenious mechanism of their plots, however poignant the 
delight of the artifice of the denouement, are somewhat like 
an epigram, once known, the brilliant point is blunted by 






The Genius of Moliere. 319 

repetition. This is not the fate of those representations of 
men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more enlarged 
sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, 
and will charm on the tenth repetition. 

No ! Moliere had not jet discovered his true genius ; he 
was not yet emancipated from his old seductions. A rival 
company was reputed to have the better actors for tragedy, 
and Moliere resolved to compose an heroic drama on the 
passion of jealousy — a favourite one on which he was inces- 
santly ruminating. Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince 
Jaloucc, the hero personated by himself, terminated by the 
hisses of the audience. 

The fall of the Prince Jaloucc was nearly fatal to the ten- 
der reputation of the poet and the actor. The world became 
critical : the marquises, and the precieuses, and recently the 
bourgeois, who were sore from Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imagi- 
naire, were up in arms ; and the rival theatre maliciously 
raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the comic genius 
of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous 
convulsed hiccough to which Moliere was liable in his tragic 
tones, but which he adroitly managed in his comic parts. 

But the genius of Moliere was not to be daunted by cabals, 
nor even injured by his own imprudence. Le Prince Jaloux 
was condemned in February, 1661, and the same' year pro- 
duced L^JEcole des Maris and Les Fdcheux. The happy 
genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of dramatic 
triumphs. 

Foreign critics — Tiraboschi and Schlegel — have depreciated 
the Frenchman's invention, by insinuating that were all that 
Moliere borrowed taken from him, little would remain of 
his own. But they were not aware of his dramatic creation, 
even when he appropriated the slight inventions of others ; 
they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Moliere, 
and the distinct classes of his comedies. Moliere had the art 
of amalgamating many distinct inventions of others into a 
single inimitable whole. Whatever might be the herbs and 
the reptiles thrown into the mystical caldron, the incantation 
of genius proved to be truly magical. 

Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a 
man of genius works, they are imbued with a raciness which 
the anxious diligence of inferior minds can never yield. Shak- 
speare, probably, poured forth many scenes in this spirit. The 
multiplicity of the pieces of Moliere, their different merits, and 



320 Literary Miscellanies. 

their distinct classes — all written within the space of twenty 
years — display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working 
faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished 
works ; he never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded 
productions. Necessity bound him to furnish novelties for 
his theatre ; he rarely printed any work. Les Fdcheux, an 
admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in verse, was 
" planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single 
fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipi- 
tated on the stage ; the humorous scenes of Monsieur de 
JPourceaugnac were thrown out to enliven a royal fete. 

This versatility and felicity of composition made everything 
with Moliere a subject for comedy. He invented two novel- 
ties, such as the stage had never before witnessed. Instead 
of a grave defence from the malice of his critics, and the flying 
gossip of the court circle, Moliere found out the art of con- 
gregating the public to The Quarrels of Authors. He dra- 
matised his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in 
scenes which seemed rather spoken than written, and with 
-characters more real than personated, he displayed his genius 
by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate it ; and 
La Critique de VEcole des Femmes is still a delightful pro- 
duction. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of 
an artist, the croquis of portraits — the loose hints of thoughts, 
many of which we discover were more fully delineated in his 
subsequent pieces. With the same rapid conception he laid 
hold of his embarrassments to furnish dramatic novelties as 
expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was himself 
no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an inci- 
dent or a character to his favourite poet. In LUmpromptu 
de Versailles, Moliere appears in his own person, and in the 
midst of his whole company, with all the irritable impatience 
of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this green- 
room bustle Moliere is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, 
his " ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece 
are, in fact, the actors themselves, who appear under their 
own names ; and Moliere himself reveals many fine touches 
of his own poetical character, as well as his managerial. The 
personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints for 
plots, and the sketches of character which the poet inciden- 
tally throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of 
these he himself subsequently adopted, and others have been 
followed up by some dramatists without rivalling Moliere. 



The Genius of Moliere. 321 

The Figaro of Beaumarchais is a descendant of the Mas- 
carille of Moliere ; but the glory of rivalling Moliere was 
reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's Critic, or a Tragedy 
Rehearsed, is a congenial dramatic satire with these two 
pieces of Moliere. 

The genius of Moliere had now stepped out of the restricted 
limits of the old comedy ; he now looked on the moving world 
with other eyes, and he pursued the ridiculous in society. 
These fresher studies were going on at all hours, and every 
object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His most 
vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some 
of his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before 
they delighted the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had ex- 
pressed his astonishment, " qu'il faisait de la prose," in the 
Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated noblemen devoted 
to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and 
Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual 
contempt, had been rehearsed by their respective authors — 
the Abbe* Cottin and Menage. The stultified booby of 
Limoges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and the mystified 
millionaire, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, were copied after 
life, as was Sganarelle, in Le Medecin malgre lui. The 
portraits in that gallery of dramatic paintings, Le Misan- 
thrope, have names inscribed under them; and the immortal 
Tartuffe was a certain bishop of Autun. No dramatist has 
conceived with greater variety the female character ; the 
women of Moliere have a distinctness of feature, and are 
touched with a freshness of feeling. Moliere studied nature, 
and his comic humour is never checked by that unnatural 
wit where the poet, the more he discovers himself, the far- 
ther he removes himself from the personage of his creation. 
The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Moliere 
is this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles 
our Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unob- 
trusive genius never occurs to us in following up his charac- 
ters, and a whole scene leaves on our mind a complete but 
imperceptible effect. 

The style of Moliere has often been censured by the fas- 
tidiousness of his native critics, as has and du style familier . 
This does not offend the foreigner, who is often struck by its 
simplicity and vigour. Moliere preferred the most popular 
and naive expressions, as well as the most natural incidents, 
to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of fashion and 

T 



32.2 Literary Miscellanies. 

fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their 
petty remonstrances ; and whenever Moliere introduced an 
incident, or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, 
and which with him had a settled meaning, this master of 
human life trusted to his instinct and his art. 

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the 
happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he 
delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot imagine that 
they were his more elevated comedies, on his old maid-servant. 
This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic humour, for 
once when Moliere read to her the comedy of another writer 
as his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could 
not be her master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even chil- 
dren to be present on such rehearsals, and at certain points 
would watch their emotions. Hence, too, in his character of 
manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An actress, 
apt to speak freely, told him, " You torment us all ; but you 
never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle- 
snuffer, was a perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas 
Diaforius, in Le Malade Imaginaire. Moliere replied, " I 
should be sorry to say a word to him ; I should spoil his 
acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to per- 
form his parts than any which I could give him." We may 
imagine Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the 
poet been also the manager. 

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of 
Moliere is the frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion 
of jealousy. The "jaundice in the lover's eye," he has 
painted with every tint of his imagination. " The green- 
eyed monster " takes all shapes, and is placed in every posi- 
tion. Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in 
agony, but often seems to make its " trifles light as air," 
only ridiculous as a source of consolation. Was Le Contem- 
plateur comic in his melancholy, or melancholy in his comic 
humour ? 

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through 
those painful stages which he has dramatised. The domestic 
life of Moliere was itself very dramatic ; it afforded Goldoni 
a comedy of five acts, to reveal the secrets of the family 
circle of Moliere ; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian novelist 
and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, Moliere, the 
Jealous Husband. 

The French, in their "petite morale " on conjugal fidelity, 



The Genius of Moliere. 323 

appear so tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real 
sufferer. Why should they else have treated domestic 
jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather than a subject for deep 
passion ? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello, nor their 
comedy a Kitely, or a Suspicious Husband. Moliere, while 
his own heart was the victim, conformed to the national 
taste, by often placing the object on its comic side. Domestic 
jealousy is a passion which admits of a great diversity of 
subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic, to the absurd and 
the ludicrous. We have them all in Moliere. Moliere often 
was himself " Le Cocu Imaginaire ;" he had been in the 
position of the guardian in L'Ecole des Maris. Like Arnolphe 
in UEcole des Femmes, he had taken on himself to rear a 
young wife who played the same part, though with less inno- 
cence ; and like the Misanthrope, where the scene between 
Alceste and Celimene is " une des plus fortes qui existant au 
theatre," he was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of 
scornful coquetry, and we know that at times he suffered in 
" the hell of lovers " the torments of his own Jealous Prince. 
When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as 
the manager, and whom he never would abandon, when at 
the height of his fortune, could he avoid accustoming him- 
self to the relaxed habits of that gay and sorrowful race, who, 
" of imagination all compact," too often partake of the 
passions they inspire in the scene ? The first actress, Madame 
Bejard, boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had 
never dispensed her personal favours but to the aristocracy. 
The constancy of Moliere was interrupted by another actress, 
Du Pare ; beautiful but insensible, she only tormented the 
poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for the 
coquetry of his Celimene, in Le Misanthrope. The facility 
of the transition of the tender passion had more closely united 
the susceptible poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame 
Bejard, not content to be the chief actress, and to hold her 
partnership in "the properties," to retain her ancient au- 
thority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing 
daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided 
at Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the 
count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armande Bejard 
soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. She 
became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he 
fondly thought that he could mould a young mind, in its 
innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and the 

t2 



324 Literary Miscellanies. 

daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protection ; and 
one day rushing into his study, declared that she would 
marry her friend. The elder Bejard freely consented to 
avenge herself on De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though 
" the little creature," she observed, was to be yoked to one 
old enough to be her father. Under the same roof were now 
heard the voices of the three females, and Moliere meditating 
scenes of feminine jealousies. 

Moliere was fascinated by his youthful wife ; her lighter 
follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial chains. 
Moliere was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on 
the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle 
Moliere, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in 
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. With what fervour the poet 
feels her neglect ! with what eagerness he defends her from the 
animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the 
spell ! 

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows 
than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Mo- 
li&re that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire ;" but these 
domestic embarrassments multiplied. Mademoiselle, reckless 
of the distinguished name she bore, while she gratified her 
personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that artful 
coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Moliere found 
no repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, 
where, however, his restless jealousy often drove him back to 
scenes which he trembled to witness. At length came the 
last argument of outraged matrimony — he threatened confine- 
ment. To prevent a public rupture, Moliere consented to live 
under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak 
only in love, however divided from his wife, Moliere remained 
her perpetual lover. He said, in confidence, " I am born with 
every disposition to tenderness. When I married, she was 
too young to betray any evil inclinations. My studies were 
devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I 
ascribed it to her temper ; her foolish passion for Count 
G-uiche made too much noise to leave me even this apparent 
tranquillity. I resolved to live with her as an honourable man, 
whose reputation does not depend on the bad conduct of his 
wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion 
has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate 
emotions have never truly loved. In her absence her image 
is before me ; in her presence, I am deprived of all reflection; 



The Sensibility of Racine. 325 

I have no longer eyes for her defects ; I only view her amiable. 
Is not this the last extreme of folly ? And are you not sur- 
prised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weak- 
ness which I cannot throw off?" 

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper im- 
pressions of their personal feelings than Moliere. With 
strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his imagina- 
tion that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a woman 
by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter 
fruits of the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a 
manager, and a poet. His income was splendid ; but he him- 
self was a stranger to dissipation. He was a domestic man, 
of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent and 
reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle 
whose literature aided his genius, or whose friendship con- 
soled for his domestic disturbances, his habits were minutely 
methodical ; the strictest order was observed throughout his 
establishment ; the hours of dinner, of writing, of amuse- 
ment, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his 
own apartment excited a morbid irritability which would 
interrupt his studies for whole days. 

Who, without this tale of Moliere, could conjecture, that 
one skilled in the workings of our nature would have ventured 
on the perilous experiment of equalizing sixteen years against 
forty — weighing roses against grey locks — to convert a way- 
ward coquette, through her capricious womanhood, into an 
attached wife ? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no 
personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change 
the immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she 
seems to have been impressed by a perfect conviction of his 
creative genius. When the Archbishop of Paris, in the pride 
of prelacy, refused the rites of sepulture to the corpse of 
Moliere the actoe, it was her voice which reminded the 
world of Moliere the poet, exclaiming — " Have they denied 
a grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an 
altar !" 



THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE. 



The " Memoirs of the poet Eacine," composed by his son, 
who was himself no contemptible poet, may be classed among 
those precious pieces of biography so delightful to the philo- 



326 Literary Miscellanies. 

sopher who studies human nature, and the literary man whose 
curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. Such 
works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. 
Such biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, con- 
tain what we often regret is wanting in the more regular life 
of a professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest 
by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with the 
hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which give so 
much life to the individual character. 

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an 
excessive tenderness of feeling ; his profound sensibility even 
to its infirmity, the tears which would cover his face, and the 
agony in his heart, were perhaps national. But if this sensi- 
bility produced at times the softest emotions, if it made him 
the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it also 
rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his 
days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which 
all men must alike undergo. 

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful 
representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part ; the agi- 
tated poet exclaimed, " Oh, mademoiselle, you are ruining my 
piece !" Terrified at this reprimand, the young actress wept ; 
the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with con- 
tagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," 
says Louis Racine, " to relate such minute circumstances, be- 
cause this facility of shedding tears shows the goodness of the 
heart, according to the observation of the ancients — 

ayaOol 8' dpidaKpveg dvSpeg. 

This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life 
uneasy ; unjust criticism affected him as much as the most 
poignant, and there was nothing he dreaded more than that 
his son should become a writer of tragedies. " I will not dis- 
simulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of 
composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves ; 
but you may believe me, when the day after we look over our 
work, we are astonished not to find that excellence we admired 
in the evening ; and when we reflect that even what we find 
good ought to be still better, and how distant we are still 
from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides 
all this, although the approbation I have received has been 
very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as 
it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation than all 



The Sensibility of Racine. 327 

the praise I received could give me pleasure." And, again, he 
endeavours to impress on him that the favour he received 
from the world he owed not to his verses. " Do not imagine 
that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses. 
Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, 
but no one regards him. His verses are only applauded from 
the mouths of the actors. I do not tire men of the world by 
reciting my works ; I never allude to them ; I endeavour to 
amuse them with matters which please them. My talent in their 
company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, 
but to show them that they possess some themselves. When 
you observe the duke pass several hours with me, you would 
be surprised, were you present, that he frequently quits me 
without my having uttered three words ; but gradually I put 
him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more satis- 
fied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said 
that Boileau and Racine had only one kind of genius, and 
could only talk about their own poetry, it is evident that the 
observation should not have extended to Racine, however it 
might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility which 
made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress, 
Mademoiselle Champmesle,* the heroine of his tragedies, had 
no genius whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, 
and memory. Racine taught her first to comprehend the 
verses she was going to recite, showed her the appropriate 
gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he even some- 
times noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though 
a mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by pas- 
sion ; and as she, thus formed and fashioned, naturally only 
played thus effectively in the dramas of her preceptor, it was 
supposed that love for the poet inspired the actress. 

When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm ; 
once with Boileau and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they 
talked of Sophocles, whom Racine greatly admired, but from 
whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic subject. Taking 
up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the (Edipus, the French 

* Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigne's petit soupers; 
so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her admirable 
letters, who speaks of "theRacines and theDespreaux's" who assisted his 
prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, dated in 1672, she 
somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for 
posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmesle :" she had then forsaken the 
marquis for the poet, who wrote Roxane in Bajazet expressly for her. — Ed. 



328 Literary Miscellanies. 

poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that 
his auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. " I 
have seen," says one of those auditors, "our best pieces re- 
presented by our best actors, but never anything approached 
the agitation which then came over us ; and to this distant 
day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the 
volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly 
pressing around him." 

It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the 
most extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made ; he wished to 
get rid entirely of that poetical fame to which he owed every- 
thing, and which was at once his pleasure, his pride, and his 
property. His education had been a religious one, in the Port- 
Royal •* but when Nicole, one of that illustrious fraternity, 
with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once asserted that all 
dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine, in 
the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled 
the denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his 
unrivalled course, he turned aside, relinquished its glory, re- 
pented of his success, and resolved to write no more trage- 
dies.f He determined to enter into the austere order of the 
Chartreux ; but his confessor, more rational than his penitent, 
assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so 
long accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible 
solitude. He advised him to marry a woman of a serious 
turn, and that little domestic occupations would withdraw 
him from the passion he seemed most to dread, that of writing 
verses. 

The marriage of Racine was an act of penance — neither 
love nor interest had any share in the union. His wife was 
a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insensible of her 
sex ; and the properest person in the world to mortify the 
passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of 
literary vanity .} It is scarcely credible, but most certainly 

* For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation, its fortunes 
and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 94. — En. 

t Racine xiltimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic offspring, 
and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his works, or even 
give a few lessous in declamation to a juvenile princess, who selected his 
A ndromaque for the subject, perhaps out of compliment to the poet, whose 
first visit became in consequence his last. — Ed. 

X The lady he chose was one Catherine de Eomanet, whose family was 
of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as 
possessing any marked personal attractions. — E». 



The Sensibility of Racine. 329 

true, since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of 
Racine had neither seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to 
read, the tragedies which had rendered her husband so cele- 
brated throughout Europe; she had only learned some of 
their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune 
as to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, 
with the princely gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 
louis, he hastened to embrace his wife, and to show her the 
treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one of the children 
for two days had not studied. " We will talk of this another 
time," exclaimed the poet ; " at present let us be happy." 
But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, 
and continued her complaints ; while Boileau in astonishment 
paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his Satire on Women, 
and exclaiming, " What insensibility ! Is it possible that a 
purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought !" This stoical 
apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, 
but the littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her 
children were the sole objects that interested this good 
woman. Racine's sensibility was not mitigated by his mar- 
riage ; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his spirits : when 
the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes ex- 
claimed, " Why did I expose myself to all this ? Why was 
I persuaded not to be a Chartreux ?" His letters to his 
children are those of a father and a friend ; kind exhortations, 
or pathetic reprimands ; he enters into the most domestic de- 
tail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity of 
their fortune. " Had you known him in his family," said 
Louis Racine, " you would be more alive to his poetical cha- 
racter, you would then know why his verses are always so full of 
sentiment. He was never more pleased than when, permitted 
to be absent from the court, he could come among us to pass 
a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to 
be a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remem- 
ber our processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I 
the rector, and the author of ' Athaliah/ chanting with us, 
carried the cross." 

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He 
was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on 
objects which occasion pain, rather than on those which exhi- 
larate. Louis Racine observes that his character resembled 
Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to dread unfor- 
tunate events, than to hope for happy ones ; semper magis ad- 



330 Literary Miscellanies. 

versos rerum exitus rnetuens quam sperans seeundos. In the 
last incident of his life his extreme sensibility led him to 
imagine as present a misfortune which might never have 
occurred. 

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the 
poet, alluded to the misery of the people. Eacine observed 
it was the usual consequence of long wars : the subject was 
animating, and he entered into it with all that enthusiasm 
peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed 
with his eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his 
observations in writing, assuring him they should not go out 
of her hand. She was reading his memoir when the king 
entered her apartment ; he took it up, and, after having 
looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who 
was the author. She replied it was a secret ; but the king 
was peremptory, and the author was named. The king asked 
with great dissatisfaction, " Is it because he writes the most 
perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able to become a 
statesman ?" 

Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, 
and declined to receive his visits for the present. Racine 
was shortly after attacked with violent fever. In the languor 
of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon to petition 
to have his pension freed from some new tax ; and he added 
an apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of 
the miseries of the people, with an humiliation that betrays 
the alarms that existed in his mind. The letter is too long 
to transcribe, but it is a singular instance how genius can de- 
grade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the varying 
smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend 
Boileau, who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, 
exclaim, with his good sense, of the court : — 

Quel sejour etranger, et pour vous et pour moi ! 

Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in 
the gardens of Versailles ; she drew aside into a retired allee 
to meet him ; she exhorted him to exert his patience and 
fortitude, and told him that all would end well. "No, 
madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she 
said, " either my heart, or my influence ?" He replied, " I 
acknowledge your influence, and know your goodness to me ; 
but I have an aunt who loves me in quite a different manner. 
That pious woman every day implores God to bestow on me 



The Sensibility of Racine. 331 

disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she has 
more influence than you." As he said these words, the 
sound of a carriage was heard ; "The king is coming!" said 
Madame de Maintenon ; " hide yourself!" 

To this last point of misery and degradation was this 
great genius reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried 
at the feet of his master in the chapel of the studious and 
religious society of Port-Royal. 

The sacred dramas of Esther and AtJialiah were among 
the latter productions of Racine. The fate of AtJialiah, his 
masterpiece, was remarkable. The public imagined that it 
was a piece written only for children, as it was performed by 
the young scholars of St. Cyr, and received it so coldly that 
Racine was astonished and disgusted.* He earnestly re- 
quested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his capital 
work. " I understand these things," said he, " and the 
public y reviendra" The prediction was a true one, but it was 
accomplished too late, long after the death of the author ; it 
was never appreciated till it was publicly performed. 

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the 
booksellers. Boileau particularly, though fond of money, 
was so delicate on this point that he gave all his works away. 
It was this that made him so bold in railing at those authors 
qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un libraire, and he de- 
clared that he had only inserted these verses, 

Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime 
Tirer de son travail un tribut legitime, 

to console Racine, who had received some profits from the 
printing of his tragedies. Those profits were, however, in- 
considerable ; the truth is, the king remunerated the poets. 

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by 
Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the means of con- 
tinuing his studies of the belles-lettres. He received, by an 
account found among his papers, above forty thousand livres 

* Tbey were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for tbe 
pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr ; she was anxious that 
they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's 
Andromaque, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that 
they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine ' ' it was so well done that 
she would be careful they should never act that drama again, " and urged 
him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not 
written a play for upwards of ten years ; he now composed his Esther, 
making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon' s career. — Ed. 



332 Literary Miscellanies. 

from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the first valet- 
de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension o' 
four thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension 
as a man of letters. 

Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary 
brought by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult 
in the tribute offered by the public to an author ? 



OF STEENE. 
Cervantes is immortal — Rabelais and Sterne have passed 
away to the curious. 

These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from 
their own times. Cervantes, with the innocent design of 
correcting a temporary folly of his countrymen, so that the 
very success of the design might have proved fatal to the 
work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the 
Hydra, an extinct monster might cease to interest the readers 
of other times, and other manners. But Cervantes, with 
judgment equal to his invention, and with a cast of genius 
made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and charms 
his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other 
follies than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the 
administration of the duke of Lerma ; with more genuine 
pleasantry than any writer from the days of Lucian, not a 
solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page ; while there is 
scarcely a subject in human nature for which we might not 
find some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his 
thoughts, is, however, a magic which ceases to work in all 
translations, and Cervantes is not Cervantes in English or in 
French ; yet still he retains his popularity among all the na- 
tions of Europe ; which is more than we can say even of our 
Shakspeare ! 

Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, 
and they were read with as much avidity and delight as the 
Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais" had the learning which the 
Englishman wanted ; while unhappily Sterne undertook to 
satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the 
true. Though the Papemanes, on whom Rabelais has ex- 
hausted his grotesque humour and his caustic satire, have not 
yet walked off the stage, we pay a heavy price in the gross- 
ness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash for odd 
stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds 



Of Sterne. 333 

readers even in France, with the exception of a few literary 
antiquaries. The day has passed when a gay dissolute abbe 
could obtain a rich abbey by getting Eabelais by heart, for 
the perpetual improvement of his patron — and Eabelais is 
now little more than a Eabelais by tradition.* 

In my youth the world doted on Sterne ! Martin Sher- 
lock ranks him among " the luminaries of the century." 
Forty years ago, young men in their most facetious humours 
never failed to find the archetypes of society in the Shandy 
family — every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every 
humorist was old Shandy, every child of Nature was Cor- 
poral Trim! It may now be doubted whether Sterne's 
natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic : the 
pathetic has survived ! 

There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong 
humour, and Sterne found it to be so ; and latterly, in de- 
spair, he asserted that " the taste for humour is the gift of 
heaven !" I have frequently observed how humour, like the 
taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have 
witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering 
how some have utterly rejected his favourite relish ! Even 
men of wit may not taste humour! The celebrated Dr. 
Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in originality of 
thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted 
to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne 
assured him that " he could not read ' Don Quixote' with 
airv pleasure, nor had any taste for ' Hudibras' or ' Gulliver ;' 
and that what we call wit and humour in these authors he 
considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in those 
compositions of the ancients which we most admire and 
esteem. "f Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and 

* The clergy were not so unfavourable to Eabelais as might have been 
expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal Jean du Bellay, 
Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important negotiations ; and. 
it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar admittance to his table 
because he had not read his works. This familiarity with his grotesque 
romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat, who is said to have always 
carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his breviary. The anecdote of 
the priest who obtained promotion from a knowledge of his works is given 
in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 10. — En. 

+ This friend, it now appears, was Dr. KiDg, of Oxford, whose anecdotes 
have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a strange 
hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a 
writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is 
not even intelligible ! 



334 Literary Miscellanies. 

Lucian monstrously cheap ! The ancients, indeed, appear not 
to have possessed that comic quality that we understand as 
humour, nor can I discover a word which exactly corresponds 
with our term humour in any language, ancient or modern. 
Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under 
the cloak of gravity, but this is not the sort of humour 
which so beautifully plays about the delicacy of Addison's 
page ; and both are distinct from the broader and stronger 
humour of Sterne. 

The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was expe- 
rienced by Sterne, for while more than half of the three king- 
doms were convulsed with laughter at his humour, the other 
part were obdurately dull to it. Take, for instance, two very 
opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a man of 
strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more 
delicacy and sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. 
Philip Skelton declared that " after reading ' Tristram 
Shandy,' he could not for two or three days attend seriously 
to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous ideas." 
But Horace Walpole, who found his " Sentimental Journey" 
very pleasing, declares that of " his tiresome ' Tristram 
Shandy,' he could never get through three volumes," 

The literary life of Sterne was a short one : it was a blaze 
of existence, and it turned his head. With his personal life 
we are only acquainted by tradition. Was the great senti- 
mentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute, and utterly depraved ? 
Some anecdotes which one of his companions* communicated 
to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Burney's 
collections, that " He was more dissolute in his conduct than 
his writings, and generally drove every female away by his 
ribaldry. He degenerated in London like an ill- transplanted 
shrub ; the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their 
ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud — an invalid 
in body and mind." Warburton declared that " he was an 
irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however 
wanting for a judicious summary of the real character of the 
founder of sentimental writing. An impenetrable mystery 
hangs over his family conduct ; he has thrown many sweet 
domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters addressed to 
his daughter : but it would seem that he was often parted 
from his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return 

* Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of cross-read- 
ings, which appeared under the name of " Papirius Cursor." 



Of Sterne. 335 

of his wife from France, though she did return, he was suf- 
fered to die in utter neglect. 

His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an 
air of levity ; he attempted this unusual manner. It was 
probably a caprice which induced him to introduce one of his 
sermons in " Tristram Shandy ;" it was fixing a diamond in 
black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he 
seems then to have had no design of publishing his " Ser- 
mons.'-' One day, in low spirits, complaining to Caleb 
Whitefoord of the state of his finances, Caleb asked him, " if 
he had no sermons like the one in ' Tristram Shandy ?' " 
But Sterne had no notion that " sermons" were saleable, for 
two preceding ones had passed unnoticed. " If you could 
hit on a striking title, take my word for it that they would 
go down." The next day Sterne made his appearance in 
raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by 
Yorick." "With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop 
this allusion to the church and the playhouse !* 

We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that 
"he submitted to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at 
his lodgings in Bond-street." But it does not appear to have 
been noticed that Sterne died with neither friend nor relation 
by his side ! a hired nurse was the sole companion of the 
man whose wit found admirers in every street, but whose 
heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. 
We cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, 
had resolved to practise his own principle, — when he made 
the philosopher Shandy, who had a fine saying for every- 
thing, deliver his opinion on death — that " there is no terror, 
brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans 
and convulsions — and the blowing of noses, and the wiping 
away of tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's 
room. Strip it of these, what is it ?" I find the moment of 
his death described in a singular book, the " Life of a Foot- 
man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of 
January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some 

* He published these two volumes of discourses under the title of 
" Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would "best 
serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the two the 
more known ;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a second 
title-page with his own name, " to ease the minds of those who see a jest, 
and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All this did 
not free Sterne from much severe criticism. — Ed. 



336 Literary Miscellanies. 

time at Almack's house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards 
took Sir James Gray's house in Clifford-street, who was going- 
ambassador to Spain. He now began house-keeping, hired a 
French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and kept a 
great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, 
the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop 
in Old Bond-street. He was sometimes called 'Tristram 
Shandy,' and sometimes ' Yorick ;' a very great favourite of 
the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to dinner 
who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the 
Earl of March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. 
Garrick, Mr. Hume, and Mr. James. ' John,' said my master, 
' go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.' I went, returned, 
and said, — I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging ; the mistress 
opened the door ; I inquired how he did. She told me to go 
up to the nurse ; I went into the room, and he was just 
a-dying. I waited ten minutes ; but in five he said, ' Now 
it is come !' He put up his hand as if to stop a blow, and 
died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry, and 
lamented him very much."* 

Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit !f 
Some letters and papers of Sterne are now before me which 

* "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a 
series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the 
family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in 
1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the 
author, 1790." — He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the 
humble station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity 
throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness. 

f Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of St. George's, 
Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater lioad. His funeral was " at- 
tended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling ;" and 
his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone, set 
up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of Freemasons." 
In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the tendencies of 
his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in a pamphlet 
entitled " A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented death of 
Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies, Jessamies, 
Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat Lane ; by 
Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor " Curiosities of Lite- 
rature" this tract is worth noting ; its author, in a preface, says that "it 
has been maliciously, or rather stupidly, reported that the late Mr. Sterne, 
alias Yorick, is not dead ; but that, on the contrary, he is writing a fifth 
and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a fiftieth and sixtieth volume 
of the book called ' The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy ;' but they 
are rather to be attributed to his ghastly ghost, which is said to walk the 
purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury Lane." — Ed. 



Of Sterne. 337 

reveal a piece of secret history of our sentimentalist. The 
letters are addressed to a young lady of the name of De Four- 
mantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel, 
who during the persecution of the French Protestants hy 
Louis XIV. emigrated to this country : they were entitled 
to extensive possessions in St. Domingo, but were excluded 
by their Protestantism. The elder sister became a Catholic, 
and obtained the estates ; the younger adopted the name of 
Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. 
The paper states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an 
attachment to Sterne, and that it was the expectation of their 
friends that they would be united ; but that on a visit Sterne 
became acquainted with a lady, whom he married, in the 
space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss 
de Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total 
derangement of intellect of this young lady. She was confined 
in a private madhouse. Sterne twice saw her there ; and from 
observation on her state drew the " Maria" whom he has so 
pathetically described. The elder sister, at the instigation of 
the father of the communicator of these letters, came to Eng- 
land, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at 
Paris. " For many years," says the writer of this statement, 
"my mother had the handkerchief Sterne alludes to." The 
anxious wish of Sterne was to have his letters returned to 
him. In this he failed ; and such as they are, without date, 
either of time or place, they are now before me. 

The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the 
statement is inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be 
correct in stating that Sterne married after an acquaintance 
of one month ; for he tells us in his Memoirs that he courted 
his wife for two years ; he, however, married in 1741. The 
" Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Four- 
mantel in one of these letters, was not published till 1747. 
Her disordered mind could not therefore have been occasioned 
by the sudden marriage of Sterne. A sentimental intercourse 
evidently existed between them. He perhaps sought in her 
sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity ; he com- 
municates to her the minutest events of his early fame ; and 
these letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, pre- 
sent a picture of his life in town in the full flower of his fame, 
eager with hope and flushed with success. 



338 Literary Miscellanies. 

LETTER I. 

" My dear Kitty, — I beg you will accept of the inclosed 
sermon, which I do not make you a present of merely because 
it was wrote by myself, but because there is a beautiful cha- 
racter in it of a tender and compassionate mind in the picture 
given of Elijah. Bead it, my dear Kitty, and believe me 
when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and 
gentle disposition in your heart which I have painted in the 
prophet's, which has attached me so much to you and your 
interests, that I shall live and die 

" Your affectionate and faithful servant, 

"Laurence Sterne. 

" P.S. — If possible, I. will see you this afternoon before I 
go to Mr. Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend, — I had the plea- 
sure to drink your health last night." 

letter II. 

" My dear Kitty, — If this billet catches you in bed, you 
are a lazy, sleepy little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, un- 
thinking fellow, for keeping you so late up — but this Sabbath 
is a day of rest, at the same time that it is a day of sorrow ; 
for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you meet 
me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve ; but in this do as 
you like. I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal 
you a quart of honey ; what is honey to the sweetness of 
thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it comes from ! I 
love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to 
eternity — so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, 
that lam, "Yours." 

LETTER III. 

" My dear Kitty, — I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats 
and a pot of honey — neither of them half so sweet as your- 
self — but don't be vain upon this, or presume to grow sour 
upon this character of sweetness I give you ; for if you do I 
shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to sweeten 
you up, and bring you to yourself again — whatever changes 
happen to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and 
according to your motto, such a one, my dear Kitty, 
" Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant. 

"L. S." 



0/ Sterne, 339 

He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first 
volumes of ' Shandy,' of which the first edition had appeared 
at York the preceding year. 

LETTER IT. tt London, May 8. 

" My dear Kitty, — I have arrived here safe and sound — 
except for the hole in my heart which you have made, like a 
dear enchanting slut as you are. — I shall take lodgings this 
morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and before I send 
this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to me, 
which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with 
great impatience. 

" I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities 
shown me that were ever known from the great ; and am 
engaged already to ten noblemen and men of fashion to dine. 
Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I could look 
for : I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers 
of great people to carry me to dine with them — he has given 
me an order for the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of 
his house, for the whole season ; and indeed leaves nothing 
undone that can do me either service or credit. He has 
undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and will 
procure me a great price — but more of this in my next. 

" And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest 
friendship for you that ever man bore towards a woman — 
wherever I am, my heart is warm towards you, and ever 
shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for the kind 
proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in 
ordering yourself to be denied to you know who — while I am 
so miserable to be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it 
would have stabbed my soul to have thought such a fellow 
could have the liberty of coming near you. — I therefore take 
this proof of your love and good principles most kindly — and 
have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was 
at your elbow — would to God I was at this moment — for I am 
sitting solitary and alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at 
night after the play), and would give a guinea for a squeeze 
of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out to see what 
you are a-doing — wish I could convey my body with it — 
adieu, dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affec- 
tionate admirer. 

"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your 

z2 



340 Literary Miscellanies. 

LETTER T. 

" My deae Kitty, — Though I have but a moment's time to 
spare, I would not omit writing you an account of my good 
fortune ; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me a hun- 
dred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all my pre- 
ferment ; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and 
tears are going to be wiped away. — I have but one obstacle 
to my happiness now left — and what that is you know as 
well as I.* 

" I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a 
purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop — all will do 
well in time. 

" From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye 
are the genteelest in town,f are full of the greatest company. — 
I dined these two days with two ladies of the bedchamber — 
then with Lord Rockingham, Lord Edgcumb, Lord Win- 
chelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c. 

" I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion. 
— Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon and well. — 
Adieu. 

" Your affectionate friend, 

"L. Stebne." 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as 
Gibbon ; but we know the price which he paid for his acqui- 
sitions — unbroken and undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere 
wit, could only discover the drudgery of compilation in the 
profound philosopher and painter of men and of nations. A 
speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles 
and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer know- 
ledge, without which every step we take is on the fairy- 
ground of conjecture and theory,- very apt to shift its un- 
substantial scenes. The researchers are like the inhabitants 
of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and are in the 
market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied 
by perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may im- 
pose on us a general resemblance of things ; but often shall 

* Can this allude to the death of his wife ? — that very year he tells his 
daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and yourself." 
f They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall Mall. 



Hume, Robertson, and Birch. 341 

we find in those shadowy outlines how the real objects are 
nearly, if not wholly lost — for much is given which is fanciful, 
and much omitted which is true. 

Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike 
in character but different in genius, it is much to be lamented 
that neither came to their tasks with the previous studies of 
half a life ; and their speculative or theoretical histories are 
of so much the less value whenever they are deficient in that 
closer research which can be obtained only in one way ; not 
the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such 
they are, however high they rank in the class of genius, who 
grasp at early celebrity, and depend more on themselves than 
on their researches. 

In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, 
Robertson acknowledges " my chief object is to adorn, as far 
as I am capable of adorning, the history of a period which de- 
serves to be better known," He probably took his lesson 
from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day, and a great 
favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no 
writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw 
any interest into a history ; that we must know to paint 
and excite the passions ; and that a history, like a dramatic 
piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe ; an 
observation which, however true, at least shows that there 
can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable 
narratives. Robertson's notion of adorning history was the 
pleasing labour of genius — it was to amplify into vastness, 
to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects of his 
meditation with a secret artifice of disposition. Such an 
historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a correct 
semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the 
miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal 
dimension. Such is theoretical history. 

The theoretical historian communicates his own character 
to his history ; and if, like Robertson, he be profound and 
politic, he detects the secret motives of his actors, unravels 
the webs of cabinet councils, explains projects that were un- 
known, and details stratagems which never took place. When 
we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of 
Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robert- 
son of whatever admiration may be due to such deep policy. 

When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes' s Manuscripts 
and Hur din's State-papers, in great haste he writes to his 



342 Literary Miscellanies. 

brother historian : — " What I wrote you with regard to 
Mary, &c, was from the printed histories and papers. But 
I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, 
the matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers 
during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means ; and as soon as I 
read them I ran to Millar, and desired him very earnestly to 
stop the publication of your history till I should write to 
you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake so 
important ; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said 
that your book was now finished ; that the whole narrative 
of Mary's trial must be wrote over again ; that it was un- 
certain whether the new narrative could be brought within 
the same compass with the old: that this change would 
require the cancelling a great many sheets ; that there 
were scattered passages through the volumes founded on your 
theory." What an interview was this of Andrew Millar and 
David Hume ! truly the bibliopole shone to greater advantage 
than the two theoretical historians I And so the world had, 
and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared 
" required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a 
great part of the edition!" 

When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson 
to pursue this newly-discovered province of philosophical or 
theoretical history, he was long irresolute in his designs, and 
so unpractised in those researches he was desirous of attempt- 
ing, that his admirers would have lost his popular produc- 
tions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose 
life had been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish 
historian to open many a clasped book, and to drink of many 
a sealed fountain. Robertson was long undecided whether to 
write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of William III. 
and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many 
other subjects. 

We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the 
purport of a visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after 
materials for the reigns of William and Anne ; he seemed to 
have little other knowledge than what he had taken upon 
trust. " I painted to him," says Lord Orford, " the diffi- 
culties and the want of materials — but the booksellers will 
out-argue me." Both the historian and " the booksellers" had 
resolved on another history : and Robertson looked upon it 
as a task which he wished to have set to him, and not a 
glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did he 



Hume, Robertsoyi, and Birch. 343 

come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? 
When he resolved to write the history of Charles V., he con- 
fesses to Dr. Birch: "I never had access to any copious 
libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of 
authors ; but I have made a list of such as I thought most 
essential to the subject, and have put them down as I found 
them mentioned in any book I happened to read. Your eru- 
dition and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, 
and I doubt not but you will be able to make such additions 
to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very 
well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from 
one another, and how little is to be learned from reading 
many books ; but at the same time, when one writes upon 
any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for him 
to consult every book relating to it upon which he can lay 
his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson knew little 
of the history of Charles V. till he began the task ; and he 
further confesses that " he had no knowledge of the Spanish 
or German," which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and 
a German emperor, was somewhat ominous of the nature of 
the projected history. 

Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we 
see, that he " never had access to any copious libraries, and 
did not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors" seems 
to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch, who was a genuine 
researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a taste 
even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pom- 
pous and voluminous list of authors prefixed to his " History 
of America;" the most objectionable of his histories, being a 
perpetual apology for the Spanish Government, adapted to 
the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to the cause 
of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from 
good authoritjr, that it would not be difficult to prove that 
our historian had barely examined them, and probably had 
never turned over half of that deceptive catalogue. Birch 
thought so, and was probably a little disturbed at the over- 
whelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian, 
while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials 
of history, but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. 
Birch's publications are either originals, that is, letters or 
state-papers ; or they are narratives drawn from originals, 
for he never wrote but from manuscripts. They are the true 
materia historica. 



344 Literary Miscellanies. 

Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph 
over our popular historians, who had introduced their beau- 
tiful philosophical history into our literature ; the dilemma 
in which they sometimes found themselves must have amused 
him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Eobertson's 
" pomp of style, and fine eloquence," " which too often tend 
to disguise the real state of the facts."* When he received 
from Eobertson the present of his " Charles V.," after the 
just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret that the histo- 
rian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's 
State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript 
trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Lord Royston's possession. 
Alas! such is the fate of speculative history; a Christmas 
may come, and overturn the elaborate castle in the air. Can 
we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had pro- 
jected a history of British America, of which we possess two 
chapters, when the rebellion and revolution broke out, con- 
gratulate himself that he had not made any further progress ? 
"It is lucky that my American History was not finished be- 
fore this event ; how many plausible theories that I should 
have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now 
happened !" A fair confession ! 

Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is 
designed to depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, 
who are the noblest of our modern authors, and exhibit a 
perfect idea of the literary character. 

Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals 
the correspondence of the historian with the literary anti- 
quary. For the satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve 
these literary relics. 

Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to 
the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V. 

" TO DR. BIRCH. 

"Gladsmuir) 19 Sept. 1757. 
" Reverend Sir, — Though I have not the good fortune 
to be known to you personally, I am so happy as to be no 
stranger to your writings, to which I have been indebted for 
much useful instruction. And as I have heard from my 
friends, Sir David Dairy mple and Mr. Davidson, that your 

* See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387. 



Hume, Robertson, and Birch. 345 

disposition to oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now 
presume to write to you and to ask your assistance without 
any apology. 

" I have been engaged for some time in writing the history 
of Scotland from the death of James V. to the accession of 
James VI. to the throne of England. My chief object is to 
adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning) the history of a period 
which, on account of the greatness of the events, and their 
close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to 
be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where 
a writer can attain that, is but a trivial merit without his- 
torical truth and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of 
factions, both religious and political, have rendered almost 
every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of 
doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains 
in my power to examine the evidence on both sides with 
exactness. You know how copious the materia Tiistorica in 
this period is. Besides all the common historians and printed 
collections of papers, I have consulted several manuscripts 
which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded that 
there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met 
with in England, and for that reason I propose to pass some 
time in London this winter. I am impatient, however, to 
know what discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what 
are the treasures before me, and with regard to this I beg 
leave to consult you. 

" I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections 
had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 
' Memoirs ' that they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I 
see likewise that the ' Depeches de Beaumont ' are in the 
hands of the same gentleman. But I have no opportunity 
of consulting your ' Memoirs ' at present, and I cannot re- 
member whether the ' Depeches de Fenelon ' be still preserved 
or not. I see that Carte has made a great use of them in a 
very busy period from 1563 to 1576. I know the strength 
of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say many things 
may be found there that he could not see, or would not pub- 
lish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether 
Fenelon's papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me 
some general idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain 
with regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist 
of are different from those published by Haynes, Anderson, 
&c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any 



316 Literary Miscellanies. 

detail that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint 
of the nature of these Collections would be extremely satisfy- 
ing to my curiosity, and I shall esteem it a great obligation 
laid upon me. 

" I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you 
would be so good as to suggest anything that you thought 
useful for me to know or to examine into, I shall receive your 
directions with great respect and gratitude. 
" I am, with sincere esteem, 

" Eev d Sir, Y r m. ob. & m. h. S r , 

"Wm. Bobertsof." 

to dr. birch. 

"Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759. 

" Dear Sir, — If I had not considered a letter of mere 
compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is so 
busy as you commonly are, I would long before this have 
made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities which you 
was so good as to show me while I was in London. I had 
not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the 
good effects of it. 

" The papers to which I got access by your means, espe- 
cially those from Lord Boyston, have rendered my work more 
perfect than it could have otherwise been. My history is 
now ready for publication, and I have desired Mr. Millar to 
send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which I beg 
you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my grati- 
tude. He will likewise transmit to you another copy, which 
I must entreat you to present to my Lord Boyston, with 
such acknowledgments of his favours toward me as are proper 
for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of original 
papers. You w^ill observe that there are several inaccuracies 
in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the 
book published, so that it was impossible to send down the 
proofs to me. I hope, however, the papers will be abundantly 
intelligible. I published them only to confirm my own 
system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of 
an antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any 
inaccuracies, either with regard to style or facts, whether of 
great or of small importance, I will esteem it a very great 
favour if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I 
shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll let me know what 
reception the book meets with among the literati of your ac- 



Hume, Robertson, and Birch. 347 

quaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the 
critical dissertation at the end, which is the production of a 
co-partnership between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. 
Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he offer compliments to you. If 
Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you will offer my 
compliments to him. 

"I am, w. great regard, D r . Sir, 

" Y r m. obed*. & mst. o. ser*., 

"William Eobeetsois'. 

" Mv address is, one of the ministers of Ed." 



TO DR. BIRCH. 

" Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759. 
" Dear Sir. — I beg leave once more to have recourse to 
your good nature and to your love of literature, and to pre- 
sume upon putting you to a piece of trouble. After consider- 
ing several subjects for another history, I have at last fixed 
upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first estab- 
lishment of the present political system of Europe. I have 
begun to labour seriously upon my task. One of the first 
things requisite was to form a catalogue of books which must 
be consulted. As I never had access to very copious libraries, 
I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but 
I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the 
subject, and have put them down just in the order which they 
occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I 
happened to read. I beg you would be so good as to look it 
over, and as your erudition and knowledge of books is infinitely 
superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to make such 
additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I 
know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians 
copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from 
reading many books, but at the same time when one writes 
upon any particular period, it is both necessary and decent for 
him to consult every book relating to it, upon which he can 
lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and 
Italian ; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German 
tongues. I flatter myself that I shall not suffer much by 
this, as the two former languages, together with the Latin, 
will supply me with books in abundance. Mr. Walpole in- 
formed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian 
MSS. in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers 



348 Literary Miscellanies. 

relating to Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much 
from it, but it would be extremely obliging if you would take 
the trouble of looking into it and of informing me in general 
what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this 
mark x is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this 
country ; if you yourself, or any friend with whom you can 
use freedom, have any of the other books in my list, and will 
be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar, he will forward 
them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude 
and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to 
offer compliments to all our common friends, and particularly 
to Dean Tucker, if he be in town this season. I wish it were 
in my power to confer any return for all the trouble you have 
taken in my behalf- " 



AT EDIKBUEGH. 

"London, 3 Jany. 1760. 

" Deae Sie, — Your letter of the 13 Dec 1 ", was particularly 
agreeable to me, as it acquainted me with your resolution to 
resume your historic pen, and to undertake a subject which, 
from its importance and extent, and your manner of treating 
it, will be highly acceptable to the public. 

" I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this 
occasion ; and after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. 
Millar ; and shall now make some additions to it. 

" The new ' Histoire d'Allemagne ' by Father Barre, chan- 
cellor of the University of Paris, published a few years ago in 
several volumes in q°., is a work of very good credit, and to 
be perused by you; as is likewise the second edition of 
'Abrege chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit public 
d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan 
of President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrege chronologique de 
l'Histoire de France,' in which the reigns of Francis I. and 
Henry II. will be proper to be seen by you. 

" The ' Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Cardinal 
Granvelle,' by Father Eosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, 
which were printed at Paris in two vol s . 12°. in 1753, contain 
some particulars relating to Charles V. But this performance 
is much less curious than it might have been, considering 
that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above 
an hundred volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at 



Hume, Robertson, and Birch. 349 

Besancon. Among these are the papers of his eminence's 
father, who was chancellor and minister to the Emperor 
Charles V. 

" Bishop Burnet, in the ' Summary of Affairs "before the 
Restoration,' prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' 
mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine, who first re- 
formed the Palatinate, as curiously written by Hubert Thomas 
Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my study 
and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts 
relating to your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved 
when the library of Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed 
to the Vatican after the taking of that city in 1622, and it 
was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4 t0 . The writer had 
been secretary and councillor to the elector. 

" Another book which 1 shall transmit to you is a valuable 
collection of state papers, made by Mons r . Rivier, and printed 
at Blois, in 1665, in two vols. f°. They relate to the reigns 
of Francis I., Henry II., and Francis II. of France. The 
indexes will direct you to such passages as concern the 
Emperor. 

" As Mons r . Amelot de la Houssaie, who was extremely 
conversant in modern history, has, in the 1 st . tome of his 
1 Memoires Historiques Politiques et Litteraires,' from p. 156 
to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that book to my 
parcel. 

" Varillas's ' Life of Henry II. of France ' should be looked 
into, though that historian has not at present much reputa- 
tion for exactness and veracity. 

" Dr. Fiddes, in his ' Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent 
occasion to introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which 
Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an express article and not a 
short one, for it consists of eight of his pages. 

" Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was 
secretary to S r . Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. 
to the imperial court, wrote to a friend of his ' a report and 
discourse of the affairs and state of Germany and the Emperor 
Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth ; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. 
However this will be soon made public, being reprinted in an 
edition of all the author's English works now in the press. 

" The ' Epitres des Princes,' translated from the Italian 
by Belleforest, will probably supply you with some few things 
to your purpose. 



350 Literary Miscellanies. 

" Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little re- 
markable except some letters from Henry VIII 's amb r . in 
Spain, in 1518, of which you may see an abstract in the 
printed catalogue. 

" In Dr. Hayne's ' Collection of State Papers in the 
Hatfield History,' p. 56, is a long letter of the lord of the 
council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb r . with the 
Emperor." 

TO DE. BIRCH. 

Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of 
Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765. 

" * * * I have met with many interruptions in carrying on 
my ' Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and partly from 
the avocations arising from performing the duties of my 
office. But I am now within sight of land. The histo- 
rical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a 
preliminary book, in which I propose to give a view of the 
progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from 
the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of 
the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking ; but 
I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few 
months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send 
me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is 
done." 



OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF 
THE AUTHORS. 

In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is 
shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished 
tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight, oversetting his 
caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his 
patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one 
more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers 
of works designed to be pursued through a long series of 
volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for 
such works, which they call " ouvrages de tongue haleine" 
and it has often happened that the haleine has closed before 
the work. 

Works of literary history have been particularly subject to 



Of Incomjilete Voluminous Works. 351 

this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human 
life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication 
of extensive acquirement ! After years of reading and 
■writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable 
researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate 
between conflicting opinions ; to resolve on the doubtful, to 
clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches : — 
but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than 
a project ! 

Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general for- 
getfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of 
the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so inte- 
rested for other persons than those about him. " It is the 
business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have 
mortalit} r always before him." 

A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate 
reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art 
of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to 
study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our 
researches, have sufficed for a Mttkatobj. With such a 
student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at 
compound interest ; and this Varro of the Italians, who per- 
formed an infinite number of things in the circumscribed 
period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of 
leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of 
wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he 
might want a world to conquer ! Muratori was never per- 
fectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same 
time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that 
he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him 
objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled 
in his youth burned clear in his old age ; and it was in his 
senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his Annali 
3? Italia as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his Rerum 
Italicarum Scriptores, and the six folios of the Antiquitates 
Medii ^Evi ! Yet these vast edifices of history are not all 
which this illustrious Italian has raised for his fatherland. 
Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable 
character of Muratori. 

But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the 
labours of the literary worthies of this order. Tiraboschi 
indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian 
literature ; but, unhappily for us, Wartof, after feeling his 



Literary Miscellani: 

z :' . ' - ',.-.- ages erf va si eon- 

a us be I rightei region, in plannii ig 
. mntrj . he had or". Pisg 

I cates 
hen, alas M sedon him 

v.s - mi of Warton's his 

is but : g orient of a fragment. 

Lift passes • in sting materials marble lies in 

blocs s Is* as a colour s 

whok - cates : . esagn of the archil 

Count Ma ix early in li: 

mighty aprojec : 

This was an historical and critical account : 
and the writings Kaftan authors mmeneed the 

publication in alph a bet but rhe six invataal 

assess contain : authors the initial letters of 

whose nan as j k and B ! This great literar. d had 

finished for the press o£l - or of his 

feseendants has suffered :: he in i iormanl state, Kieh in 
acquis: v..y. .;ns in his lecasaons, : : the 

:; Mazzuehelli were freely given fcc : most 
and elegant researches in his national I iteratnre; his oorre- 
sponc; ;; s said to consist of i; js with eig. 

literary n - besides t eves of his literary contempo- 

raries — as been defrauded of the h: 



The history ;:' Bailxxt's "Jug 3 des & ins snr les 

Prir , ges des Auteurs saons of the 

Learned on the Learned s r raarkable instance how little 
the calculations of writ; > > serve ^rtainthe 

period of their projected labour. Baillet p s s e . s life in the 
midst of the great library of the literary family of the 
Lamoignons. and as ar _ - 

catalogue in t. 

what any author had professedly composed on ar. 5 
but also marked those passages relati : rhe subject which 
- ad touched on. By means of this catalogue, the 
philosophical patron of Baillet at a s ingle § 

: results of human kno sdgi 
inquiries. This eatalogu; -: and euri; 

learned came to study, and ruffe 

notices. Amid this world of be oks skill and labour of 

Baillet prompted him to coll; -I opinions of the 



Of Incomplete Voluminous Works. 353 

learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the pro- 
gress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one 
of the most magnificent plans of literary history. This in- 
structive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his 
edition. It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable 
subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents a 
view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few 
can conceive. The project was too vast for an individual ; it 
now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than 
the critics, translators, and poets, forming little morfc than the 
first, and a commencement of the second great division ; 
to more important classes the laborious projector never 
reached ! 

Another literary history is the " Bibliotheque Francoise " 
of Goujet, left unfinished by his death. He had designed a 
classified history of French literature ; but of its numerous 
classes he has only concluded that of the translators, and not 
finished the second he had commenced, of the poets. He lost 
himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and con- 
sumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes ! 

A great enterprise of the Benedictines, the " Histoire 
Litteraire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, 
which even its successive writers have only been able to carry 
down to the close of the twelfth century !* 

Dated Clement, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed 
the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared ; 
this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the par- 
ticulars and dissertations are sometimes curious : but the 
diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far 
as the letter H ! The alphabetical order which some writers 
have adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life ! 
The last edition of our own " Biographia Britannica," feeble, 
imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the 
booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monu- 
ment which every literary Englishman may blush to see so 
hopelessly interrupted. 

When Le Grand D'Atjsst, whose " Fabliaux " are so well 
known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, 
the plan suggested by the Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched 
in the Melanges tires d'une grande Bibliotheque, of a picture 
of the domestic life of the French people from their earliest 

* This work lias been since resumed. 

A A 



354 Literary Miscellanies. 

periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision ; it had 
novelty, amusement, and curiosity : " lesujet m^enparut neuf, 
riche et piquant." He revelled amid the scenes of their 
architecture, the interior decorations of their houses, their 
changeable dress, their games, and recreations ; in a word, on 
all the parts which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. 
But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the 
fairy scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never- 
ending labour and weariness ; and the three volumes which we 
now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and architecture, 
exhibit only a very curious, but not always a very amusing, 
account of the food of the French nation. 

. No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit — 
he may excite a smile in those who have never experienced 
this toil of books and manuscripts — but he claims the sym- 
pathy of those who would discharge their public duties so 
faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking picture of 
these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of 
the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his 
curious work : — 

" Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, 
till then, was unaltered, and which excess of labour has 
greatly changed, I devoted myself to write the lives of the 
learned of the sixteenth century. Renouncing all kinds of 
pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day, extracting, 
ceaselessly copying ; after this sad life I now wished to draw 
breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I 
found myself possessed of many thousands of bulletins, of 
which the longest did not exceed many lines. At the sight 
of this frightful chaos, from which I was to form a regular 
history, I must confess that I shuddered ; I felt myself for 
some time in a stupor and depression of spirits ; and now 
actually that I have finished this work, 1 cannot endure the 
recollection of that moment of alarm without a feeling of in- 
voluntary terror. What a business is this, good God, of a 
compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it merits 
some regard. At length I regained courage ; I returned to 
my researches : I have completed my plan, though every day 
I was forced to add, to correct, to change my facts as 
well as my ideas ; six times has my hand re-copied my work ; 
and, however fatiguing this may be, it certainly is not that 
portion of my task which has cost me most." 

The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late 



Of Domestic Novelties at first Condemned. 355 

Dr. Watt may serve as a mortifying example of the length 
of labour and the brevity of life. To this gigantic work the 
patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty years ; he had 
just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded 
down his last page ; the son who, during the last four years, 
had toiled under the direction of his father, was chosen to 
occupy his place. The work was in the progress of publica- 
tion, when the son also died ; and strangers now reap the 
fruits of their combined labours. 

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous 
designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection 
of Johnson on the planting of trees : " There is a frightful 
interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates 
the growth of trees has the unwelcome remembrance of the 
shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he 
is doing what will never benefit himself ; and, when he re- 
joices to see the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another 
shall cut it down." 



OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIEST CONDEMNED. 

It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered 
among the most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of do- 
mestic life, on their first introduction ran great risks of being 
rejected, by the ridicule or the invective which they encoun- 
tered. The repulsive effect produced on mankind by the 
mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find esta- 
blished among our indispensable conveniences, or by a prac- 
tice which has now become one of our habits, must be 
ascribed sometimes to a proud perversity in our nature; 
sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and to that re- 
pugnance to alter what is known for that which has not 
been sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, how- 
ever, within the latter half century considerably abated; 
but it proves, as in higher matters, that some philosophical 
reflection is required to determine on the usefulness, or the 
practical ability, of every object which comes in the shape of 
novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had 
never discovered the practice of washing his hands, but 
cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for certain 
have ridiculed and protested against the inventor of soap, and 
as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted the invention. 

A A2 



356 Literary Miscellanies. 

A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be sur- 
prised, had he laid before him the history of some of the 
most familiar domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred 
the ridicule of the wits, and had to pass through no short 
ordeal of time in the strenuous opposition of the zealots 
against domestic novelties. The subject requires no grave 
investigation ; we will, therefore, only notice a few of uni- 
versal use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however 
obstinately man moves in " the march of intellect," he must 
be overtaken by that greatest of innovators — Time itself ; 
and that, by his eager adoption of what he had once re- 
jected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed un- 
useful, he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former 
generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do what we 
all are now doing. 

Foeks are an Italian invention ; and in England were so 
perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes 
Moryson, in his curious " Itinerary," relating a bargain with 
the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him from Venice 
to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to 
have " his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with 
his knife, spoon, and/br^." This thing was so strange that 
he found it necessary to describe it.* It is an instrument 
" to hold the meat while he cuts it ; for they hold it ill- 

* Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely unknown 
as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the 
" Archseologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving 
of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era ; they were found with frag- 
ments of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited 
in a box, of which there were some decayed remains ; together with about 
seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (a.d. 796), to 
Ethelstan (a.d. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons 
in the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious mate- 
rials, and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory 
of the Duke of Normandy, in 1363, " une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et 
aux deux fonts deux saphirs ;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of 
France, in 1380, " une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, ou il y a ij balays 
et X perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the 
dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the 
celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver 
forks to eat pears with ; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one 
fork of gold to take sops from wine (a prendre la soupe ou vin). They 
appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as 
now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person 
in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by 
the highest classes; hence their comparative rarity. — Ed. 



Of Domestic Novelties at first Condemned. 357 

manners that one should touch the meat with his hands."* 
At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eat- 
ing as the Turkish noblesse at present do, with only the free 
use of their fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to 
their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They were, 
indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering on the 
table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their 
tables, the servant bore a long wooden " voiding-knife," by 
which he scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, 
called " a voider." Beaumont and Fletcher describe the tiling, 

They sweep the table with a wooden dagger. 
Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little 
man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excel- 
lence — 

the laudable use of forks, 

To the sparing of napkins. 

This personage is well-known to have been that odd com- 
pound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. 
He positively claims this immortality. "I myself thought 
good to imitate the Italian fashion by this fobbed cutting of 
meat, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, 
and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the 
use of forks was, however, long ridiculed ; it was reprobated 
in Germany, where some uncleanly saints actually preached 
against the unnatural custom " as an insult on Providence, 
not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a curious 
fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de 
St. Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle be- 
tween the old members, zealous for their traditions, and the 
young reformers, for their fingers. f The allusions to the use 
of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic writers 
through the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, 
show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and 
novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general 
use before the Restoration ! On the introduction of forks 
there appears to have been some difficulty in the manner they 
were to be held and used. In The Fox, Sir Politic Would- 
be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes — 

Then you must learn the use 

And handling of your silver fork at meals. 

* Moryson's "Itinerary," parti, p. 208. 
t I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the ' ' Diction- 
naire de Trevoux." 



358 Literary Miscellanies. 

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, 
or there is more than one way in which it may be practised. 
D'Archenholtz, in his " Tableau de l'Angleterre," asserts that 
" an Englishman may be discovered anywhere, if he be ob- 
served at table, because he places his fork upon the left side 
of his plate ; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without 
the knife ; and a German, by planting it perpendicularly into 
his plate ; and a Russian, by using it as a toothpick." 

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger 
brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed from 
the nice manners of the stately Venetians. This implement 
of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same anathema 
as the fantastical ornament of " the complete Signor," the 
Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who 
caught " the manners as they rise," have been astonished 
that now no decorous person would be unaccompanied by 
what Massinger in contempt calls 

Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork ! 

Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things ; few 
but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were then 
called, would venture to display them. For a long while it 
was not usual for men to carry them without incurring the 
brand of effeminacy ; and they were vulgarly considered as 
the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely 
disliked — namely, a mincing Frenchman. At first a single 
umbrella seems to have been kept at a coffee-house for some 
extraordinary occasion — lent as a coach or chair in a heavy 
shower — but not commonly carried by the walkers. The 
Female Tatler advertises "the young gentleman belonging to 
the custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed the um- 
brella from Wilks* Coffee-house, shall the next time be wel- 
come to the maid's pattens" An umbrella carried by a man 
was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As 
late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has writ- 
ten his own life, informs us, that when he carried " a fine 
silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain, he could 
not with any comfort to himself use it ; the people calling 
out ' Frenchman ! why don't you get a coach ?' " The fact 
was, that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining 
with the true esprit de corps, were clamorous against this 
portentous rival. This footman, in 1778, gives us further 
information : — " At this time there were no umbrellas worn 



Of Domestic Novelties at first Condemned. 359 

in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, 
where there was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a 
lady or a gentleman, if it rained, between the door and their 
carriage." His sister was compelled to quit his arm one 
day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his um- 
brella. But he adds that " he persisted for three months, 
till they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners 
began to use theirs, and then the English. ISTow it is 
become a great trade in London."* The state of our popu- 
lation might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the 
number of umbrellas. 

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source 
of declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the 
ascetics of monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don 
John of Austria, describing that golden age, the good old 
times, when they only used " carts drawn by oxen, riding in 
this manner to court," notices that it was found necessary to 
prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, " to such a height 
was this infernal vice got, which has done so much injury to 
Castile." Tn this style nearly every domestic novelty has 
been attacked. The injury inflicted on Castile by the intro- 
duction of coaches could only have been felt by the purveyors 
of carts and oxen for a morning's ride. The same circum- 
stances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be 
kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found 
their "occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on 
pillions behind their footmen, nor would take the air, where 
the air was purest, on the ; river. Judges and counsellors 
from their inns would no longer be conveyed by water to 
Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor 
palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of 
their habitual employments — the watermen, the hackneyrnen, 

* Umbrellas are, however, an invention of great antiquity, and may be 
seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also 
depicted on early Greek rases. But the most curious fact connected with 
their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors 
had of them ; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, 
appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In 
Csedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British 
Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth 
century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head 
by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings. 
The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above* 
they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century. — Ed. 



360 Literary Miscellanies. 

and the saddlers. Families were now jolted, in a heavy- 
wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The disturbance 
and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now 
have known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet* and man, sent 
down to us an invective against coaches, in 1623, dedi- 
cated to all who are grieved with " the world running on 
wheels." 

Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, con- 
veys some information in this rare tract of the period when 
coaches began to be more generally used — " Within our 
memories our nobility and gentry could ride well-mounted, 
and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore 
brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation 
far greater than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the 
name of a coach was heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon 
extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis 
Drake ride in a coach ? They made small use of coaches ; 
there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes 
to sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when 
in the whole kingdom there was not one ! It is a doubtful 
question whether the devil brought tobacco into England in 
a coach, for both appeared at the same time." It appears 
that families, for the sake of their exterior show, miserably 
contracted their domestic establishment ; for Taylor, the 
Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep 
from ten to a hundred proper serving-men, they now made 
the best shift, and for the sake of their coach and horses had 
only " a butterfly page, a trotting footman, and a stiff-drink- 
ing coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which 
hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or 
prisons. Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of 
coach-riding this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, 
as soon as a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, 
and could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As 
hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust exercise, 
on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a 
domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or 
rolling the great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the 

* Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term "Water- 
poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this quaint 
title, " The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and coaches." 
It is an unsparing satire. — Ed. 



Of Domestic Novelties at first Condemned. 361 

change of this new fashion they found out the inconvenience 
of a sedentary life passed in their coaches.* 

Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, 
they were not only costly in the ornaments — in velvets, 
damasks, taffetas, silver and gold lace, fringes of all sorts — 
but their greatest pains were in matching their coach-horses. 
" They must be all of a colour, longitude, latitude, cressitude, 
height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh 
them in a pair of balances) ; and when once matched with a great 
deal of care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach 
maimed till a meet mate be found, whose corresponding may 
be as equivalent to the surviving palfrey, in all respects, as 
like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or codlings to boiled 
apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds — 
" They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses 
than in the marriage of their sons and daughters." A great 
fashion, in its novelty, is often extravagant ; true elegance 
and utility are never at first combined ; good sense and expe- 
rience correct its caprices. They appear to have exhausted 
more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first in- 
troduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary 
use. Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the cala- 
mity of coaches, and that " housekeeping never decayed till 
coaches came into England ; and that a ten-pound rent now 
was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft of the 
coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water- 
poet, were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, 
in the changes of time, some trades disappear, other trades 
rise up, and in an exchange of modes of industry the nation 
loses nothing. The hands which, like Taylor's, rowed boats, 
came to drive coaches. These complainers on all novelties, 

* Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the first intro- 
duction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the first driver, 
and first English coachmaker. " In the year 1564 Gruilliam Boonen, a 
Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that brought 
the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with 
as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them coaches, and rid 
in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all the 
beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual among the 
nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a great trade 
of coachmaking ;" and he also notes that in the year of their introduction 
to England "Walter Eippon made a coche for the Earl of Eutland, which 
was the first coche that was ever made in England." — Ed. 



362 Literary Miscellanies. 

unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us 
a most prosperous view of the condition of " this new trade 
of coachmakers, as the gainfullest about the town. They are 
apparelled in sattins and velvets, are masters of the parish, 
vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor Heliogabalus and Sar- 
danapalus — seldom without their mackeroones, Parmisants 
(macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and 
kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer 
pies, which they have from their debtors, worships in the 
country !" Such was the sudden luxurious state of our first 
great coachmakers ! to the deadly mortification of all water- 
men, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our loungers, 
thrown out of employ ! 

Tobacco. — It was thought, at the time of its introduction, 
that the nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like 
all novel tastes the newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks 
among us. " The money spent in smoke is unknown," said 
a writer of that day, lamenting over this " new trade of 
tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven 
thousand tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable 
" Counterblast to Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the 
popular cry ; but the blast was too weak against the smoke, 
and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to terrify his liege 
children that " they were making a sooty kitchen in their 
inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous 
kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, 
that after their death were opened." The information was 
perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has incurred so 
much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay the 
extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end 
themselves ; and the royal author might have left the subject 
to the town-satirists of the day, who found the theme inex- 
haustible for ridicule or invective. 

Coal. — The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may 
be ascribed to the scarcity of wood in the environs of the 
metropolis. Its recommendation was its cheapness, however 
it destroys everything about us. It has formed an artificial 
atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is acknow- 
ledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, 
from early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. 
Charles Fox once said to a friend, " I cannot live in the 
country ; my constitution is not strong enough." Evelyn 
poured out a famous invective against " London Smoke.' 



Of Domestic Novelties at first Condemned. 363 

" Imagine," he cries, " a solid tentorium or canopy over 
London, what a mass of smoke would then stick to it ! This 
fuliginous crust now comes down every night on the streets, 
on our houses, the waters, and is taken into our bodies. On 
the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing upon 
the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, 
and bring home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the 
gradual destruction it effects on every article of ornament and 
price ; and " he heard in France, that those parts lying south- 
west of England, complain of being infected with smoke from 
our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have my- 
self observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls, 
however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were 
in no instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which 
our coal-smoke never fails to produce. There was a procla- 
mation, so far back as Edward the First, forbidding the use 
of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of the nobility and 
gentry, that they could not go to London on account of the 
noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed fore- 
saw the general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating 
timber. Coal fires have now been in general use for three 
centuries. In the country they persevered in using wood and 
peat. Those who were accustomed to this sweeter smell de- 
clared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his 
clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknow- 
ledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed 
over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it. 
But man accommodates himself even to an offensive thing 
whenever his interest predominates. 

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver 
topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the oppo- 
sition to new discoveries. Medical history supplies no unim- 
portant number. On the improvements in anatomy by Mal- 
pighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university 
of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted 
to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the 
graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the prin- 
ciples and conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, 
which had been approved of so many ages, to be overturned 
by any person. In phlebotomy we have a curious instance. 
In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that 
when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on 
the other. A great physician insisted on a contrary prac- 



364 Literary Miscellanies. 

tice ; a civil war of opinion divided Spain ; at length they had 
recourse to courts of law ; the novelists were condemned ; 
they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth ; he was on 
the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the 
Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having heen legitimately 
bled. This puzzled the emperor, who did not venture on a 
decision. 

The introduction of antimony and the Jesuits' hark also 
provoked legislative interference ; decrees and ordinances were 
issued, and a civil war raged among the medical faculty, of 
which Guy Patin is the copious historian. Vesalius was in- 
cessantly persecuted by the public prejudices against dissec- 
tion ; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led to 
so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was 
hardly admitted even in the latter days of the old man ; Lady 
Wortley Montague's introduction of the practice of inocula- 
tion met the same obstinate resistance as, more recently, that 
of vaccination startled the people. Thus objects of the 
highest importance to mankind, on their first appearance, are 
slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude 
of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those 
objects which that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a 
tardy patron of true knowledge. 

A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have 
here but touched on — the gradual changes in public opinion — , 
the utter annihilation of false notions, like those of witchcraft, 
astrology, spectres, and many other superstitions of no remote 
date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on ignorance, and 
audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the 
plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subver- 
sive of some ancient ones ; doctrines which probably shall one 
day be as generally established as at present they are utterly 
decried, and which the interests of corporate bodies oppose 
with all their cumbrous machinery ; but artificial machinery 
becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out by the 
friction of ages. 



DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 

The characteristics of servants have been usually known by 
the broad caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly 
by the most popular — the writers of comedy. According to 



Domesticity ; or, a Dissertation on Servants. 365 

these exhibitions, we must infer that the vices of the menial 
are necessarily inherent to his condition, and consequently 
that this vast multitude in society remain ever in an irre- 
coverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning 
depredator of the household ; the tip-toe spy, at all corners — 
all ear, all eye : the parasitical knave — the flatterer of the 
follies, and even the eager participator of the crimes, of his 
superior. The morality of servants has not been improved by 
the wonderful revelations of Swift's " Directions," where the 
irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. 
This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the 
masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a 
manual for the profligate domestic. Servants have acknow- 
ledged that some of their base doings have been suggested to 
them by their renowned satirist. 

Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by 
thieves and rogues described and collected together, such a 
compilation of their artifices and villanies would serve to put 
us on our guard. The theorist of legislation seems often to 
forget the metaphysical state of man. With the vitiated 
mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have 
been called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how 
too close an inspection of crime may grow into criminality 
itself. Hence it is, that when some monstrous and unusual 
crime has been revealed to the public, it rarely passes with- 
out a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the intellect is 
struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred. 
Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a 
brother, more stupid but more innocent than himself. I take 
the passage from that extraordinary Spanish comedy, in 
twenty-five acts, the Spanish Bawd. It was no doubt 
designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic, 
yet we should regret that the Spanish Bawd was as 
generally read by servants as Swift's "Directions": — 

" Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant 
honesty, thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as 
most of these masters now-a-days are. Grain friends, which 
is a during and lasting commodity ; live not on hopes, relying 
on the vain promises of masters. The masters love more 
themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss ; and the 
like love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality 
was lost long ago — rewards are grown out of date. Every one. 
is now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant's 



366 Literary Miscellanies. 

service, serving his turn, and therefore they ought to do the 
same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one who 
befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, 
looking for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot 
be thy friend, such difference is there of estate and condition 
between you two." 

This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo 
of its sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions 
are sacred traditions among the livery. We may trace them 
from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift and Mandeville. 
Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture of the state 
of the domestics, when it seems " they had experienced pro- 
fessors among them, who could instruct the graduates in 
iniquity seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose 
upon, and find out the blind side of their masters." The 
footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into a society 
together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to 
carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a com- 
mon fund was provided to maintain any suit at law against 
any rebellious master. This seems to be a confederacy which 
is by no means dissolved. 

Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper 
man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend his 
person, when the toilet was a serious avocation requiring a 
more delicate hand and a nicer person than he who was to 
walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This 
searching genius of philosophy and les petites moeurs solemnly 
warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his 
order, he never would resume it. About this period the 
masters were menaced by a sort of servile war. The famous 
farce of High Life below Stairs exposed with great happiness 
the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured 
clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition ; 
and, as ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on 
the many, in the result worked the reform they so greatly 
dreaded.* One of the grievances in society was then an 

* The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to admit any 
servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were supposed to be in 
attendance on their masters. Their foibles and dishonesty being so com- 
pletely hit off in the play incensed them greatly ; and they created such an 
uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in future. In Edinburgh the 
opposition to the play produced still greater scenes of violence, and the 
lives of some of the performers were threatened. It at last became neces- 



Domesticity ; or, a Dissertation on Servants. 367 

anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our country, 
of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose 
establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of 
the departure of the guest, this victim had to pass along a 
line of domestics, arranged in the hall, each man presenting 
the visitor with some separate article, of hat, gloves, coat and 
cane, claiming their " vails." It would not have been safe to 
refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out 
the hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.* 

When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing 
marketable and transferable, the single principle judged suffi- 
cient to regulate the mutual conduct of the master and the 
domestic was, to command and to obey. It seems still the 
sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the menial. 
But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies 
of domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of 
its zeal. To be served well, we should be loved a little ; the 
command of an excellent master is even grateful, for the good 
servant delights to be useful. The slave repines, and such is 
the domestic destitute of any personal attachment for his 
master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him whose 
beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp ? The master 
dresses and wages highly his pampered train ; but this is the 
calculated cost of state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, 
for a Hercules in the hall, or an Adonis for the drawing-room ; 
but at those times, when the domestic ceases to be an object 
in the public eye, he sinks into an object of sordid economy, 
or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are recklessly 
neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air ; he 
is driven when he is already exhausted ; he begins the work 
of midnight, and is confined for hours with men like himself, 

sary for their masters to stop this outbreak on the part of their servants ; 
and alter the whole system of the household economy which led to such 
results. — Ed. 

* These vails, supposed to be the free gratuity of the invited to the 
servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that persons paid ser- 
vants by that mode only — levying a kind of black-mail on their friends, 
which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing," says a noble 
lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the vails are enormous." 
The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little control over 
them ; they are said in some instances to have paid for their places, as 
some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having, owing to 
the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being well-attended. It 
was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three kingdoms, after 
the riots which resulted from the production of the play noted above. — Ed. 



368 Literary Miscellanies. 

who fret, repine, and curse. They have their tales to compare 
together ; their unhallowed secrets to disclose. The masters 
and the mistresses pass by them in review, and little deem 
they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper 
follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the 
servants familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, 
for even the occupation of such domestics is little more than 
a dissolute idleness. A cell in Newgate does not always con- 
tain more corrupters than a herd of servants congregated in 
our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the modes of 
fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the 
health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever 
perceives that he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his 
own thoughts. The heart of the simple throbs with this 
emotion ; but it hardens the villain who would rejoice to 
avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; 
it extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it 
stings even the good-tempered into insolence. 

South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an 
awful interval, the superior and the domestic. " A servant 
dwells remote from all knowledge of his lord's purposes ; he 
lives as a kind of foreigner under the same roof ; a domestic, 
yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal man- 
ners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has 
since passed through a mighty evolution. In the visible 
change of habits, of feelings, of social life, the humble domestic 
has approximated to, and communicated more frequently even 
with " his lord." The domestic is now not always a stranger 
to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor — their 
confidential counsellor — the mirror in which his lordship con- 
templates on his wishes personified. 

This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of 
the noble friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures 
the laughter in "Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed 
such intense attention to affairs solely relating to servants. 
"Let him jest with dignity, and let him be ironical upon 
useful subjects, leaving -poor slaves to eat their porridge, or 
drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think 
proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning 
of Sir Walter Scott : — " The noble lord's feelings of dignity 
deemed nothing worthy of attention that was unconnected 
with the highest orders of society." Such, in truth, was too 



Domesticity ; or, a Dissertation on Servants. 369 

long the vicious principle of those monopolists of personal dis- 
tinction, the mere men of elevated rank. 

Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapaci- 
tated to comprehend how far the personal interests of servants 
are folded up with the interests of the house they inhabit. 
They are unconscious that they have any share in the wel- 
fare of the superior, save in the degree that the prosperity of 
the master contributes to the base and momentary pur- 
poses of the servant. But in small communities we perceive 
how the affections of the master and the domestic may take 
root. Look in an ancient retired family, whose servants often 
have been born under the roof they inhabit, and where the 
son is serving where the father still serves ; and sometimes 
call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the 
proud and endearing term of " our house." We discover this 
in whole countries where luxury has not removed the classes 
of society at too wide distances from each other, to deaden 
their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic Switzerland, 
among its villages and its pastures ; in France, among its 
distant provinces ; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities ; 
and in Germany, where simple manners and strong affections 
mark the inhabitants of certain localities. Holland longv 
preserved its primitive customs ; and there the love of order 
promotes subordination, though its free institutions have 
softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and there we 
find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual 
in Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mis- 
tresses aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. 
These domestics participating in the comforts of the family, 
become naturalized and domiciliated ; and their extraordinary 
relatives are often adopted by the heart. An heroic effort of 
these domestics has been recorded ; it occurred at the burning 
of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the 
flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their en- 
deared families. 

It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are 
most intense ; all concentrating themselves in their private 
circles, in such localities there is no public — no public which 
extorts so many sacrifices from the individual. Insular situ- 
ations are usually remarkable for the warm attachment and 
devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard of 
families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is 

B B 



370 Literary Miscellanies. 

strikingly displayed in the island of Eagusa, on the coast of 
Dalmatia : for there they provide for the happiness of the 
humble friends of the house. Boys, at an early age, are re- 
ceived into families, educated in writing, reading, and arith- 
metic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were 
almost born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime 
enterprise. They form a race of men who are much sought 
after for servants ; and the term applied to them of " Men 
of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of character for un- 
limited trust and unwearying zeal. 

The mode of providing for the future comforts of their 
maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, 
which we must regret is only practised in such limited com- 
munities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annates des Voyages," has 
painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some 
romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, 
on one great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the 
ample reward of their good conduct. On that happy day 
the mistress and all the friends of the family prepare for the 
maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every friend 
of the house sends some article ; and the mistress notes down 
the gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. 
The donations consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, 
and other useful articles for a young woman. These tributes 
of friendship are placed beside a silver basin, which contains 
the annual wages of the servant ; her relatives from the 
country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets 
covered with ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural 
delicacies. They are received by the master himself, who 
invites them to the feast, where the company assemble, and 
particularly the ladies. All the presents are reviewed. The 
servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her 
mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn 
enumeration of her good qualities, concluding by announcing 
to the maiden that, having been brought up in the house, if 
it be her choice to remain, from henceforward she shall be 
considered as one of the family. Tears of affection often fall 
during this beautiful scene of true domesticity, which termi- 
nates with a ball for the servants, and another for the supe- 
riors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with 
their joyous musicians ; and, if the maiden prefers her old 
domestic abode, she receives an increase of wages, and at a 



Domesticity ; or, a Dissertation on Sei % vants. 371 

succeeding period of six years another jubilee provides her 
second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of the in- 
fluence of this passion of domesticity in the servant ; — its 
merit equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos 
Ayres, where our brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant 
general, the negroes, slaves as they were, joined the inha- 
bitants to expel the invaders. On this signal occasion the 
city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the 
negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded 
the freedom of eighty of their leaders. One of them, havino- 
shown his claims to the boon, declared, that to obtain his 
freedom had all his days formed the proud object of his 
wishes : his claim was indisputable ; yet now, however, to 
the amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered free- 
dom ! The reason he alleged was a singular refinement of 
heartfelt sensibility : — " My kind mistress," said the negro, 
" once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in her infirm old 
age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure she 
leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be 
tempted to abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom 
that she may know she possesses a slave who never will quit 
her side." 

Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish 
some striking illustrations of the powerful emotion of domes- 
ticity, it is not that we are without instances in the private 
history of families among ourselves. I have known more 
than one where the servant has chosen to live without wages, 
rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed 
fortunes ; and another where the servant cheerfully worked 
to support her old lady to her last day. 

"Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn 
to the United States. No system of servitude was ever so 
preposterous. A crude notion of popular freedom in the 
equality of ranks abolished the very designation of "servant," 
substituting the fantastic term of " helps." If there be any 
meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts 
to little ; their engagements are made by the week, and thev 
often quit their domicile without the slightest intimation. 

Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine 
that they exist independent of the virtues of their domestics. 
The good conduct of the servant stamps a character on the 
master. In the sphere of domestic life they must frequently 

BB 2 



372 Literary Miscellanies. 

come in contact with them. On this subordinate class, how 
much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may 
rest ! The gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and 
await him at all seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in 
peril. Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott — "In a free 
country an individual's happiness is more immediately con- 
nected with the personal character of his valet, than with 
that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be 
deemed extravagant if I venture to add, that the habitual 
obedience of a devoted servant is a more immediate source of 
personal comfort than even the delightfulness of friendship 
and the tenderness of relatives — for these are but periodical ; 
but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our 
habits, and patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all 
hours. It is those feet which hasten to us in our solitude ; 
it is those hands which silently administer to our wants. At 
what period of life are even the great exempt from the gentle 
offices of servitude ? 

Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more 
heartfelt affection than by those whose pursuits require a 
perfect freedom from domestic cares. Persons of sedentary 
occupations, and undisturbed habits, abstracted from the daily 
business of life, must yield unlimited trust to the honesty, 
while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful 
zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of 
the master and the servant have often been exalted into a 
companionship of feelings. 

When Madame de Genlis heard that Pope had raised a 
monument not only to his father and to his mother, but also 
to the faithful servant who had nursed his earliest years, she 
was so suddenly struck by the fact, that she declared that 
" This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for its 
singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our church- 
yards would have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones 
erected by grateful masters to faithful servants ;"* and a 
closer intimacy with the domestic privacy of many public 
characters might have displayed the same splendid examples. 
The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may 
be found on the east end of the outside of the parish church 
of Twickenham. The stone bears this inscription : — 

* Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and exhibit many 
grateful Epitaphs on Servants. 






Domesticity ; or, a Dissertation on Servants. 373 

To the memory of 

Mart Beach, 

who died November 5, 1725, aged 78. 

Alexander Pope, 

whom she nursed in his infancy, 

and constantly attended for thirty-eight years, 

Erected this stone 

In gratitude to a faithful Servant. 

The original portrait of Shen"STO]n t e was the votive gift of 
a master to his servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's 
own hand, is the following dedication : — " This picture be- 
longs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William 
Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her 
native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her 
fidelity. — W. S." We might refer to many similar evidences 
of the domestic gratitude of such masters to old and 
attached servants. Some of these tributes maybe familiar to 
most readers. The solemn author of the " Night Thoughts" 
inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant ; the 
caustic Giffokd poured forth an effusion to the memory of a 
female servant, fraught with a melancholy tenderness which 
his muse rarely indulged. 

The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, 
the most sublime, development of this devotion of a master 
to his servant, is a letter addressed by that powerful genius 
Michael Angelo to his friend Yasari, on the death of 
Urbino, an old and beloved servant.* Published only in the 
voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari, it 
seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to trans- 
late it in despair : for we feel that we must weaken its mas- 
culine yet tender eloquence. 

MICHAEL AKGELO TO VASAEI. 

" My deae George, — I can but write ill, yet shall not 
your letter remain without my saying something. You know 
how Urbino has died. Great was the grace of God when he 

* It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed hy the great 
sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would 
beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert his 
independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a somewhat 
hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to his dying 
domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at his bed- 
side. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who was 
himself at the time eighty-two years of age. — Ed. 



374 Literary Miscellanies. 

bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the grievance 
and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he 
kept me living ; and in d}dng he has taught me to die, not 
in sorrow and with regret, but with a fervent desire of death. 
Twenty and six years had he served me, and I found him a most 
rare and faithful man ; and now that I had made him rich, 
and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose of my 
old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than 
that of seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was 
this happy death to him ; yet, even more than this death, 
were his regrets increased to leave me in this world the 
wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself has 
departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneli- 
ness of life." 

Even the throne has not been too far removed from this 
sphere of humble humanity, for we discover in St. George's 
Chapel a mural monument erected by order of one of our late 
sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant of a favourite 
daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic affection 
in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a 
cherished inmate. 

King George III. 

Caused to be interred near this place the body of 

Mart GUscoigne, 

Servant to tbe Princess Amelia ; 

and tbis stone 

to be inscribed in testimony of bis grateful sense 

of tbe faitbful services and attacbment 

of an amiable young woman to 

bis beloved Daughter. 

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not 
peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to modern 
Europe ; it is not the charity of Christianity alone which has 
hallowed this sensibility, and confessed this equality of affec- 
tion, which the domestic may participate : monumental in- 
scriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their 
slaves, have been preserved in the great collections of Grsevius 
and Gruter. # 

* There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who consecrate 
" to themselves and tbeir servants" tbe sepulchres they erect in their own 
lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from those who 
had served them faitbfully. An instance of affectionate regard to tbe 
memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes ; it is an 



375 



PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM. 

Printed Lettees, without any attention to the selection, is 
so great a literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to de- 
tect the first modern who obtruded such formless things on 
public attention. I conjectured that, whoever he might be, 
he would be distinguished for his egotism and his knavery. 
My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing 
less than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino 
could have adventured on this project ; he claims the honour, 
and the critics do not deny it, of being the first who published 
Italian letters, Aretino had the hardihood to dedicate one 
volume of his letters to the King of England, another to the 
Duke of Florence ; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of 
Pope Julius Third — evidently insinuating that his letters 
were worthy to be read by the royal and the noble. 

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen 
of England, on her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which 
offers a very extraordinary catalogue of the ritual and cere- 
monies of the Romish church. It is indeed impossible to 
translate into Protestant English the multiplied nomenclature 
of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service. 
As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this 
amazing contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the 
freedom of the human mind, I present the reader with an ac- 
curate translation of it : — 

" Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England. 

" The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath 
of Epistles, and the Spirit of Grospels, had need unloose the lan- 
guage of my words in congratulating your superhumanMajesty 
on having not only restored conscience to the minds and hearts 
of Englishmen and taken deceitful heresy away from them, 
but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped for, that 
charity and faith were again born and raised up in them ; on 
which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff 

inscription by one Sextus Arms Varcis, to Hermes, "his best servant" 
(servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which records the 
death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius Severus, his 
master, by which it appears he was the child of an old servant, who was 
honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in 
the epitaph " his sweetest freedman" (liberto dulcissimo). — Ed. 



376 Literary Miscellanies. 

Julius, the College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it 
seems in Rome as if the shades of the old Caesars with visible 
effect showed it in their very statues ; meanwhile the pure 
mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes you, and marks 
you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets, 
and dedicates you," &c. 

" The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupe- 
faction of stupid wonder ; and all proceeds from your being 
in the grace of God in every deed, whose incomprehensible 
goodness is pleased with seeing you, in holiness of life and in- 
nocence of heart, cause to be restored in those proud countries, 
solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, 
parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, 
observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the 
dying, festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, 
lights to lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, 
robings to sacristies, and decencies to baptisms : and that 
nothing may be wanting (thanks to your pious and most 
entire nature), possession has been regained to offices, of hours ; 
to ceremonies, of incense ; to reliques, of shrines ; to the con- 
fessed, of absolutions ; to priests, of habits ; to preachers, of 
pulpits ; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences ; to scriptures, of 
interpreters ; to hosts, of communions ; to the poor, of alms ; 
to the wretched, of hospitals ; to virgins, of monasteries ; to 
fathers, of convents ; to the clergy, of orders ; to the defunct, 
of obsequies ; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, 
and matins, the privileges of daily and nightly bells." 

The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent 
publications by more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely 
followed, who had at first been the amanuensis of Aretino, 
then his rival, and concluded his literary adventures by being- 
hanged at Rome ; a circumstance which at the time must 
have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect 
also, been an imitator of his original, a man equally feared, 
flattered, and despised. 

The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of 
that age were perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and 
easy path to fame ; and since it was ascertained that a man 
might become celebrated by writings never intended for the 
press, and which it was never imagined could confer fame on 
the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors are 
scarcely known to posterity but as letter- writers. We have 
the too-elaborate epistles of Bembo, secretary to Leo X., and 



Printed Letters in the Vernacular Idiom. 377 

the more elegant correspondence of Anktbal Caeo ; a work 
which, though posthumous, and published by an affectionate 
nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a publisher, is a model 
of familiar letters. 

These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of 
their readers, novelty was courted by composing letters more 
expressly adapted to public curiosity. The subjects were 
now diversified by critical and political topics, till at length 
they descended to one more level with the faculties, and more 
grateful to the passions of the populace of readers — Love ! 
Many grave personages had already, without being sensible of 
the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch 
sonnets. Dost, a bold literary projector, who invented a 
literary review both of printed and manuscript works, with 
not inferior ingenuity, published his love-letters; and with 
the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly entitled them 
" Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole 
were designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni 
was one of those fertile authors who have too little time of 
their own to compose short works. Doni was too facetious 
to be sentimental, and his quill was not plucked from the 
wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who 
threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces ; Paeabosco, 
who in six books of " Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too 
phlegmatic to sigh over his inkstand. 

Denina mentions Lewis Pasqtjaligo of Venice as an im- 
prover of these amatory epistles, by introducing a deeper 
interest and a more complicate narrative. Partial to the 
Italian literature, Denina considers this author as having 
given birth to those novels in the form of letters, with which 
modern Europe has been inundated ; and he refers the curious 
in literary researches, for the precursors of these epistolary 
novels, to the works of those Italian wits who flourished in 
the sixteenth century. 

"The Worlds" of Do:nt, and the numerous whimsical 
works of Obtensio Landi, and the " Circe " of G-elli, of which, 
we have more than one English translation, which, under 
their fantastic inventions, cover the most profound philoso- 
phical views, have been considered the precursors of the finer 
genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a 
numerous progeny, of D'Argens and others. 

The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections 
of letters, which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may 



378 Literary Miscellanies. 

be considered as the works of artists. They have a collection 
of " Lettere di Tredici Uomini Illustri," which appeared in 
1571 ; another more curious, relating to princes — " Lettere 
de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a Principi, o 
ragionano di Principi ;" Venezia, 1581, in 3 vols, quarto. 

But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the 
artist, has appeared in more recent times, in seven quarto 
volumes, consisting of the original letters of the great painters, 
from the golden age of Leo X., gradually collected by Bot- 
takt, who published them in separate volumes. They abound 
in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and display 
the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist 
will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effu- 
sions ; chronicles of the days and the nights of their viva- 
cious brothers. 

It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first 
satirist in the English language, claims also, more justly per- 
haps, the honour of being the first author who published 
familiar letters. In the dedication of his Epistles to Prince 
Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop Hall claims the 
honour of introducing " this new fashion of discourse by 
epistles, new to our language, usual to others ; and as novelty 
is never without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of 
these epistles, in six decades, many were written during his 
travels. We have a collection of Donne's letters abounding 
with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not natural. 

As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a 
vehicle for the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, 
whose Epistolse bears his name, takes a wider circumference 
in " Familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, historical, poli- 
tical, and philosophical, upon emergent occasions." The 
" emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long con- 
finement in the Fleet — that English Parnassus ! Howell is 
a wit, who, in writing his own history, has written that of 
his times ; he is one of the few whose genius, striking in the 
heat of the moment only current coin, produces finished medals 
for the cabinet. His letters are still published. The taste 
which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie 
Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not 
all, are genuine productions of their different writers. 

The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in 
letter-writing. The royal emigrant had caught the tone of 
Voiture. We have some few letters of the wits of this court, 



Printed Letters in the Vernacular Idiom. 379 

but that school of writers, having sinned in gross materialism, 
the reaction produced another of a more spiritual nature, in a 
romantic strain of the most refined sentiment. Volumes suc- 
ceeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine 
Philips, in the masquerade-dress of " The Matchless Orinda," 
addressed Sir Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus ;" while 
Mrs. Behn, in her loose dress, assuming the nymph-like form 
of "Astrsea," pursued a gentleman, concealed in a domino, 
under the name of " Lycidas." 

Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were 
strained by one more effort after novelty ; a new species ap- 
peared, " From the Dead to the Living," by Mrs. Bowe : 
they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to gratify 
the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx ; the caprice 
of public favour has returned them to the place whence they 
came. 

The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the 
public eye. Partly accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, 
extracted from the family chests the letters of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague, who long remained the model of letter- 
writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray, 
Cowper, "Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible 
colours have given an imperishable charm to these fragments 
of the human mind, may close our subject ; printed familiar 
letters now enter into the history of our literature. 



AN INQUIKY 



LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF 
JAMES THE FIRST; 

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE. 






" The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late celebrated 
pen (Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices ; and 
others, who have professedly given an account of it, have filled their works 
with libel and invective, instead of history. Both King James and his 
ministers have met with a treatment from posterity highly unworthy of 
them, and those who have so liberally bestowed their censures were entirely 
ignorant of the true springs and causes of the actions they have undertaken 
to represent." — Sawyer's Preface to " Winwood's Memorials." 

" II y auroit un excellent livre a faire sur les injustices, les oublis, et 

les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES." MADAME DE GrENLIS. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary con- 
science. Many years ago I set off in the world with the 
popular notions of the character of James the First ; but in 
the course of study, and with a more enlarged comprehension 
of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast of his real 
with his apparent character ; and I thought I had developed 
those hidden and involved causes which have so long influenced 
modern writers in ridiculing and vilifying this monarch. 

This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty decision, 
nor a designed inquiry ; the results gradually arose through 
successive periods of time, and, were it worth the while, 
the history of my thoughts, in my own publications, might 
be arranged in a sort of chronological conviction.* 

It w^ould be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering 
all that popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose ; this 
were incompatible with that constant search after truth which 
we may at least expect from the retired student. 

I had originally limited this inquiry to the literary charac- 
ter of the monarch ; but there was a secret connexion between 
that and his political conduct ; and that again led me to 
examine the manners and temper of the times, with the 
effects which a peace of more than twenty years operated on 
the nation. I hope that the freshness of the materials, often 
drawn from contemporary writings which have never been 

* I have described the progress of my opinions in "Curiosities of Lite- 
rature," vol. i. p. 467, last edition. 



384 Advertisement. 

published, may in some respect gratify curiosity. Of the 
political character of James the First opposite tempers will 
form opposite opinions ; the friends of peace and humanity 
will consider that the greatest happiness of the people is that 
of possessing a philosopher on the throne ; let.profounder in- 
quirers hereafter discover why those princes are suspected of 
being but weak men, who are the true fathers of their people ; 
let them too inform us, whether we are to ascribe to James 
the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the disorders of 
their reign, or place them to the ingratitude and wantonness 
of mankind. 



AN INQUIRY 



INTO THE 



LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF 
JAMES THE FIRST; 

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE. 



If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and tradi- 
tionary prejudices, as well as the people, they however pre- 
serve among themselves a paramount love of truth, and the 
means to remove errors, which have escaped their scrutiny. 
The occasion of such errors may be complicate, but, usually, 
it is the arts and passions of the few which find an indolent 
acquiescence among the many, and firm adherents among 
those who so eagerly consent to what they do not dislike to 
hear. 

A remarkable instance of this appears in the character of 
James the First, which lies buried under a heap of ridicule 
and obloquy ; yet James the First was a literary monarch at 
one of the great eras of English literature, and his contem- 
poraries were far from suspecting that his talents were incon- 
siderable, even among those who had their reasons not to like 
him. The degradation which his literary character has 
suffered has been inflicted by more recent hands ; and it may 
startle the last echoer of Pope's " Pedant-reign " to hear that 
more wit and wisdom have been recorded of James the First 
than of any one of our sovereigns. 

An "Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his 
anomalous but emphatic style, terms this class of writers, is 
placed between a double eminence of honours, and must incur 
the double perils ; he will receive no favour from his brothers, 
the Faineants, as a whole race of ciphers in succession on the 
throne of France were denominated, and who find it much 
more easy to despise than to acquire ; while his other brothers, 
the republicans of literature, want a heart to admire the man 
who has resisted the perpetual seductions of a court-life for 

c c 



386 Character of James the First. 

the silent labours of his closet. Yet if Alphonsus of Arragon 
be still a name endeared to us for his love of literature, and 
for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study expressed 
by the device on his banner of an open booh, how much more 
ought we to be indulgent to the memory of a sovereign who 
has written one still worthy of being opened ? 

We must separate the literary from the political character 
of this monarch, and the qualities of his mind and temper 
from the ungracious and neglected manners of his personal one. 
And if we do not take a more familiar view of the events, the 
parties, and the genius of the times, the views and conduct of 
James the First will still remain imperfectly comprehended. 
In the reign of a prince who was no military character, we 
must busy ourselves at home ; the events he regulated may be 
numerous and even interesting, although not those which 
make so much noise and show in the popular page of history, 
and escape us in its general views. The want of this sort of 
knowledge has proved to be one great source of the false 
judgments passed on this monarch. Surely it is not philoso- 
phical to decide of another age by the changes and the feelings 
through which our own has passed. There is a chronology 
of human opinions which, not observing, an indiscreet philo- 
sopher may commit an anachronism in reasoning, 

When the Stuarts became the objects of popular indigna- 
tion, a peculiar race of libels was eagerly dragged into light, 
assuming the imposing form of history ; many of these state- 
libels did not even pass through the press, and may occa- 
sionally be discovered in their MS. state. Yet these publica- 
tions cast no shade on the talents of James the First. His 
literary attainments were yet undisputed ; they were echoing 
in the ear of the writers, and many proofs of his sagacity were 
still lively in their recollections. 



THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF 
JAMES THE FIRST. 

Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned 
to oppose as well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, 
levelled the father of the race ; we read with delight pages 
which warm and hurry us on, mingling truths with rumours, 
and known with suggested events, with all the spirit of secret 
history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the 



First Assailants of James the First. 387 

lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of 
Harris.* It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican 
Catharine Macaulay, and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, 
Horace Walpole.f A senseless cry of pedantry had been 

* The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently repub- 
lished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as entering into 
our historical stores. 

Harris is a curious researcher ; but what appears more striking in his 
historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities 
which make against his own opinions and statements. Yet is Harris a 
writer likely to impose on many readers. He announces in his title-pages 
that his works are "after the manner of Mr. Bayle." This is but a lite- 
rary imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language 
both for style and philosophical thinking. The extraordinary impartiality 
he displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only 
the more likely to deceive us ; for by that unalterable party feeling, which 
never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by doubts, 
surmises, and suggestions ; a character sinks to the level of his notions by 
a single stroke ; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose, he wrests 
the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to practise 
such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise themselves under 
a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting facts, was indifferent 
to their results ; but Harris is more intent on the deductions than the facts. 
The truth is, Harris wrote to please his patron, the republican Hollis, who 
supplied him with books, and every friendly aid. "It is possible for 
an ingenious man to be of a party without being partial,'''' says Rush worth ; 
an airy clench on the lips of a sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicious, 
and betrays the weak pang of a half-conscience. 

f Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal Authors," is 
as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney ; he might have written 
both without any acquaintance with the works he has so maliciously criti- 
cised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed over the ' ' Defence 
of Poetry ;" and in his second edition he makes this insolent avowal, that 
" he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient 
foundation for so high a character as he acquired." Every reader of taste 
knows the falseness of the criticism, and how heartless the polished cynicism 
that could dare it. I repeat, what I have elsewhere said, that Horace 
"Walpole had something in his composition more predominant than his wit, 
a cold, unfeeling disposition, which contemned all literary men, at the 
moment his heart secretly panted to partake of their fame. 

Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on 
the works of James I. ; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that 
folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two 
pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal 
Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both 
nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from 
the King's " Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts 
nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and 
polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer 
startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified at 

c c 2 



388 Character of James the First. 

raised against him by the eloquent invective of Bolingbroke, 
from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has out- 
lived his lordship's prose : — 

Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign ! 
Some gentle James to bless the land again ; 
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne, 
Give law to words, or war with words alone, 
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule, 
And turn the council to a grammar-school ! 

Dunciad, book iv. ver. 175. 



THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded 
that James I. was a mere college pedant, and that all his 
works, whatever they maybe, are monstrous pedantic labours. 
Yet this monarch of all things detested pedantry, either as it 
shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin, or in 
ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of 
remote signification : these are the only points of view in 
which I have been taught to consider the meaning of the 
term pedantry, which is very indefinite, and always a relative 
one. 

The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled 
opinions and contested principles ; an age, in which authority 
was considered as stronger than opinion ; but the vigour of 
that age of genius was infused into their writings, and those 
citers, who thus perpetually crowded their margins, were pro- 
found and original thinkers. When the learning of a pre- 
ceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general 
which were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all 
this knowledge to reproach the fathers of their literature with 
pedantry ? Lord Bolingbroke has pointedly said of James I. 
that " his pedantry was too much even for the age in which 
he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age 
when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been 
over-clouded by the French court of Charles II., a race of un- 
principled wits, and the revolution-court of William, heated 
by a new faction, too impatient to discuss those principles of 

a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to those 
extracts from his MS. letters which are in " Calamities of Authors," where 
he has made his literary- confessions, and performs his act of penance. 



His Polemical Studies, 389 

government which they had established. It was easy to 
ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely 
met with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, 
Selclen, Usher, and Milton, must first be condemned before 
this odium of pedantry can attach itself to the plain and 
unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is remarkable, 
has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and elabo- 
rate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclama- 
tions. These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were 
little aware that the king has expressed himself with energy 
and distinctness on this very topic. His majesty cautions 
Prince Henry against the use of any " corrupt leide, as book- 
language, and pen-and-inkhom termes, and, least of all, nig- 
nard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire 
as completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. 
" I would also advise you to write in "your own language, for 
there is nothing left to be said in Greek and Latine already ; 
and, ynewe (enough) of poore schollers would match you in 
these languages ; and besides that it best becometh a King, 
to purine and make famous Ms owne tongue ; therein he may 
goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe in all 
honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste 
could have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, 
yet not obsolete prejudices, at a time when many of our own 
great authors yet imagined there was no fame for an English- 
man unless he neglected his maternal language for the artificial 
labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had even his 
own domestic Essays translated into Latin ; and the king found 
a courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's 
writings. There was something prescient in this view of the 
national language, by the king, who contemplated in it those 
latent powers which had not yet burst into existence. It is 
evident that the line of Pope is false which describes the king 
as intending to rule " senates and courts" by " turning the 
council to a grammar-school." 



HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES. 



This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with 
those studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has 
incurred much ridicule from one party, who were not his 
contemporaries ; and such vehement invective from another, 



390 - Character of James the First. 

who were ; who, to their utter dismay, discovered their monarch 
descending into their theological gymnasium to encounter 
them with their own weapons. 

The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., 
as in the preceding one of Elizabeth,* were identified toge- 
ther ; nor yet have the same causes in Europe ceased to act, 
however changed or modified. The government of James 
was imperfectly established while his subjects were wrestling 
with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The 
Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they 
aimed to carry into the family of Spain, and had even fixed 
on Arabella Stuart, to marry her to a Prince of Parma ; and 
the Puritans would have abolished even sovereignty itself ; 
these parties indeed were not able to take the field, but all 
felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doc- 
trines. When a religious body has grown into power, it 
changes itself into a political one ; the chiefs are flattered b} r 
their strength and stimulated by their ambition ; but a power- 
ful body in the State cannot remain stationary, and a divided 
empire it disdains. Religious controversies have therefore been 
usually coverings to mask the political designs of the heads of 
parties. 

We smile at James the First threatening the States-general 
by the English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, 
who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius, and had also 
vented some metaphysical notions of his own respecting 
the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head of the 
Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called 
the Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were reli- 
gious doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle between 
Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by the French interest, and the 
Prince of Orange, supported by the English ; even to our 
own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed 
the Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be 
the pretext.f 

* I have more largely entered into the history of the party who at- 
tempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who 
published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, 
than had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and 
those personages are of some importance and curiosity ; but were imper- 
fectly known to the popular writers of our history. — See "Quarrels of 
Authors," p. 296, et seq. 

f PeDsionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at length 
brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable pun 



! 



His Polemical Studies. 391 

What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the 
Dutch Pensionary, was much like what was taking place 
between the King of England and his own subjects. James I. 
had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and the 
Nonconformists,* — to play them one against another ; but 
there was a distinct end in their views. " James I.," says 
Burnet, " continued always writing and talking against 
Popery, but acting for it." The King and the bishops were 
probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than 
to republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but 
gunpowder and Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to 
banish, or suppress, but the Catholic families were ancient and 
numerous ; and the most determined spirits which ever sub- 
verted a government were Catholic. f Yet what could the 
King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their " con- 
on the occasion ; lie said that ' ' the Canons of the Synod of Dort had taken 
off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in his 
curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod, 
since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the 
mind of these divines that Barn evelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the 
Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, 
a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public 
history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the Swiss 
divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared in 
it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's "Letters" 
that his lordship has made this important discovery. 

* James did all he could to weaken the Catholic pai'ty by dividing them 
in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the Nonconformists, com- 
plained to the king of the printing and dispersing of Popish pamphlets, 
the king answered, that this was done by a warrant from the Court, to 
nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which was of great 
service, " Doctor, " added the king, "you are a better clergyman than 
statesman." — Neale's "History of the Puritans," vol. i. p. 416, 4to. 

f The character and demeanour of the celebrated Gruy or Guido Fawkes, 
who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of Johnson, 
I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some characteristic 
touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir Edward Hoby to 
Sir Thomas Edmotides, our ambassador at the court of Brussels — dated 
19th November, 1605. " One Johnson was found in the vault where the 
Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he was sorry ? He 
answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was 
threatened that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince 
of Orange ; he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson 
was brought to the king's presence, the king asked him how he could con- 
spire so hideous a treason against his children and so many innocent souls 
who had never offended him ? He answered, that dangerous diseases 
required a desperate remedy ; and he told some of the Scots that his intent 
was to have blown them back again into Scotland !" — Mordacious Guy 
Fawkes ! 



392 Character of James the First, 

ceited parity," as he called it, should he once throw himself 
into their hands, but the fate his son received from them ? 

In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still 
entered into the same church with the Reformed ; this com- 
mon union was broken by the impolitical impatience of the 
court of Rome, who, jealous of the tranquillity of Elizabeth, 
hoped to weaken her government by disunion ;* but the Re- 
formed were already separating among themselves by a new 
race, who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, 
were for reforming the Reformation. These had most extra- 
vagant fancies, and were for modelling the government accord- 
ing to each particular man's notion. Were we to bend to 
the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of the 
republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva ? 



POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL. 

It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied 
to polemical studies ; properly understood, these were in fact 
political ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, " He affected more 
learning than became a king, which he broached on every 
occasion in such a manner as would have misbecome a 
schoolmaster." Would the politician then require a half- 
learned king, or a king without any learning at all ? Our 
eloquent sophist appears not to have recollected that pole- 
mical studies had long with us been considered as royal ones ; 
and that from a slender volume of the sort our sovereigns 
still derive the regal distinction of " Defenders of the 
Faith." The pacific government of James I. required that 
the King himself should be a master of these controversies to 
be enabled to balance the conflicting parties ; and none but a 
learned king could have exerted the industry or attained to 
the skill. 

* Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the Jesuit, 
says, ' ' There were no Recusants in England — all came to church howsoever 
Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and deposed 
Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public service. — 
"State Trials," vol. i. p. 242. 

The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the 
Catholic party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. After- 
wards, when he found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and 
his successor, that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth 
till a happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith ! 



393 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 

I>~ the famous conference at Hampton Court, which the King 
held with the heads of the Nonconformists, we see his ma- 
jesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense, 
but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some 
have imagined comported with the dignity of a crowned 
head. The truth is, James, like a true student, indulged, 
even to his dress, an utter carelessness of parade, and there 
was in his character a constitutional warmth of heart and a 
jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to state- 
occasions ; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests. 
James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt 
that these Nonconformists, while they were debating small 
points, were reserving for hereafter their great ones ; were 
cloaking their republicanism by their theology, and, like all 
other politicians, that their ostensible were not their real 
motives.* Harris and Xeale, the organs of the Noncon- 
formists, inveigh against James ; even Hume, with the phi- 
losophy of the eighteenth century, has pronounced that the 
king was censurable " for entering zealously into these fri- 
volous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke declares 
that the king held this conference " in haste to show his 
parts." Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and 
assertion for accuracy of knowledge. In the present in- 
stance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to try the king on 
his arrival in England : they presented a petition for a con- 

* In political history we usually find that the heads of a party are much 
wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they intend to acquire, 
their first demands are small ; but the honest souls who are only stirred 
by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that their business is 
done negligently. Should the party at first succeed, then the bolder 
spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through policy, is left to 
itself ; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All this occurred in the 
case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid Nonconformists did 
confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of the Silenced 
Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for them at 
Hampton Court were not of their nomination or judgment ; they insisted 
that these delegates should declare at once against the whole church esta- 
blishment, &c, and model the government to each particular man's no- 
tions ! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king with 
the conflicting opinions of their constituents. — Lansdoime MSS. 1056, 51. 

This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their 
historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit. 



394 Character of James the First. 

ference, called "The Millenary Petition,"* from a thousand 
persons supposed to have signed it; the king would not 
refuse it ; but so far from being " in haste to show his 
parts," that when he discovered their pretended grievances 
were so futile, " he complained that he had been troubled 
with such importunities, when some more private course 
might have been taken for their satisfaction." 

The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwith- 
standing the absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of 
the entertaining Fuller a picturesque and dramatic compo- 
sition, where the dialogue and the manners of the speakers 
are after the life. 

In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar in- 
tercourse with the king ; we may admire the capacity of the 
monarch whose genius was versatile with the subjects ; 
sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only 
mature studies could obtain ; entering into the graver parts 
of these discussions ; discovering a ready knowledge of 
biblical learning, which would sometimes throw itself out 
with his natural humour, in apt and familiar illustrations, 
throughout indulging his own personal feelings with an un- 
paralleled naivete. 

The king opened the conference with dignity ; he said " he 
was happier than his predecessors, who had to alter what 
they found established, but he only to confirm what was 
well settled." One of the party made a notable discovery, 
that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests 
of Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this 
antiquity, since he had always heard from them that it was 
"a rag of popery." " Dr. Reynolds," said the king, with an 
air of pleasantry, " they used to wear hose and shoes in 
times of popery ; have you therefore a mind to go bare- 
foot ?" Eeynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, 
" with my body I thee worship." The king said the phrase 
was an usual English term, as a gentleman of worship, &c, 
and turning to the doctor, smiling, said, " Many a man 

* The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.," vol. ii. p. 
672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed at Douay, 
"A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is remarkable : 
they complained they were excluded "that supreme court of parliament 
first founded by and for Catholike men, was furnished with Catholike pre- 
lates, peeres, and personages ; and so continued till the times of Edward 
VI. a childe, and Queen Elizabeth a woman." — Dodd's "Church 
History." 



The Hampton-Court Conference. 395 

speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow ; if you 
had a good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and 
worship you could do to her were well bestowed." Rey- 
nolds was not satisfied on the 37th article, declaring that 
" the Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this land," and 
desired it should be added, " nor ought to have any." In 
Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily 
laughed — a laugh easily caught up by the lords ; but the king 
nevertheless condescended to reply sensibly to the weak ob- 
jection. 

" What speak you of the pope's authority here ? Habe- 
mus jure quod Jiabemus ; and therefore inasmuch as it is said 
he hath not, it is plain enough that he ought not to have." 
It was on this occasion that some "pleasant discourse 
passed," in which " a Puritan" was defined to be " a Pro- 
testant frightened out of his wits." The king is more par- 
ticularly vivacious when he alludes to the occurrences of his 
own reign, or suspects the Puritans of republican notions. 
On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king royally 
decided — " I will not argue that point with you, but answer 
as kings in parliament, Le Boy s'avisera." 

When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king was 
somewhat stirred, yet what is admirable in him (says Bar- 
low) without a show of passion. The king had lived among 
the republican saints, and had been, as he said, " A king 
without state, without honour, without order, where beard- 
less boys would brave us to our face ; and, like the Saviour of 
the world, though he lived among them, he was not of 
them." On this occasion, although the king may not have 
" shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a naive 
effusion, remarkable for painting after the home-life a repub- 
lican government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for 
he has preserved part of it in the body of his history. 
Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the copious explosion 
from Barlow : — 

" If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well 
with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, 
and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure 
me and my council, and all our proceedings ; then Will shall 
stand up and say, It must be thus ; then Dick shall reply, 
Nay, marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I 
must once more reiterate my former speech, Le Boy 
s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you 



396 Character of James the First. 

demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, I 
may hearken to you ; for let that government once be up, I 
am sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us 
have work enough : but, Dr. Eeynolds, till you find that I 
grow lazy, let that alone." 

The king added, 

" I will tell you a tale : — Knox flattered the queen-regent 
of Scotland that she was supreme head of all the church, if 
she suppressed the popish prelates. But how long, trow ye, 
did this continue ? Even so long, till, by her authority, the 
popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his adhe- 
rents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they 
began to make small account of her authority, and took the 
cause into their own hands." 

This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the 
person of a monarch. 

The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of 
his arguments. Even Neale, the great historian of the 
Puritans, complaining that Dean Barlow has cut off some of 
the king's speeches, is reluctantly compelled to tax himself 
with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he ac- 
knowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke 
against the corruptions of the church, and the practices of 
the prelates, insomuch that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the 
chapel, said that his majesty did that day wonderfully play 
the Puritan.* The king, indeed, was seriously inclined to an 

* The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them, "potent 
courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of vehement 
zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an epigrammatic 
epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson — 

' ' Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad, 
Who died with want of what he had." 
We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this conference. 
When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that "livings rather want 
learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities pining 
for want of places. I wish therefore some may have single coats (one 
living) before others have doublets (pluralities), and this method I have 
observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I com- 
mend your memorable care that way ; but a doublet is necessary in cold 
weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable jest, 
the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, Bishop of 
Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety, desirous 
of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish to have 
his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the king with 
a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near him, 
that he could not hear the preacher for the old — bishop ; prefixing an 



The Hampton-Court Conference. 397 

union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry 
tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others ; and 
even commended when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of 
the Puritans ; the king consented to the only two important 
articles that side suggested ; a new catechism adapted to the 
people — " Let the weak be informed and the wilful be pun- 
ished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible 
which forms our present version. " But," added the king, 
" it must be without marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is 
the worst for them, full of seditious conceits ; Asa is cen- 
sured for only deposing his mother for idolatry, and not hill- 
ing her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel had 
lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of 
our first dissenters were futile — their innovations intermin- 
able ; and we discover the king's notions, at the close of a 
proclamation issued after this conference : " Such is the 
desultory levity of some people, that they are always lan- 
guishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they 
humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public 
management, and make the administration ridiculous." Such 
is the vigorous style of James the First in his proclama- 
tions ; and such is the political truth, which will not die 
away with the conference at Hampton Court. 

These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient 
scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intel- 
lectual exercise. James instructed his son Charles,* who 

epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales. Kennet has pre- 
served for us the "rank relation," as he calls it ; not, he adds, but " we- 
have had divers hammerings and conflicts within ns to leave it out." — 
Kennet's " History of England," ii. 729. 

* That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's interference 
in these matters may be traced. When James charged the chaplains, who 
were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as possible, religious 
disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is able to moderate 
in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile, grew warm, 
vehemently affirming, "I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point in contro- 
versy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king said was 
afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the conference 
Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of the kirk. 
Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of contro- 
versy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles I. 
fought the theological duel ; and the old man, cast down, retired with such 
a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining^ the order of 
episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is attributed 
to the deep vexation of this discomfiture . The veteran, who had succeeded 
in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die of a fit of 



398 Character of James the First. 

excelled in them ; and to those studies Whitelocke attributes 
that aptitude of Charles T. which made him so skilful a sum- 
mer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so clear a 
perception in giving his decisions. 



THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

We now turn to the writings of James the First. He com- 
posed a treatise on demoniacs and witches ; those dramatic 
personages in courts of law. James and his council never 
suspected that those ancient foes to mankind could be dis- 
missed by a simple Nolle prosequi. " A Commentary on the 
Revelations," which was a favourite speculation then, and on 
which greater geniuses have written since his day. " A 
Counterblast to Tobacco !" the title more ludicrous than the 
design.* His majesty terrified "the tobacconists," as the 

conversion ; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and sturdy dis- 
putant. The king's controversy was published ; and nearly all the 
wr iters agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous 
than grateful : Bishop Kennet, touched by the esprit du corps, honestly tells 
us, that "some thought the king had been better able to protect the, Church, 
if he had not disputed for it." This discovers all the ardour possible for 
the establishment, and we are to infer that an English sovereign is only to 
fight for his churchmen. But there is a nobler office for a sovereign to per- 
form in ecclesiastical history — to promote the learned and the excellent, 
and repress the dissolute and the intolerant. 

* Not long before James composed his treatise on " Daemonologie, " the 
learned Wierus had published an elaborate work on the subject. " De 
prcestigiis Dcemonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis," &c, 1568. He 
advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the supposed 
cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these sorcerers — but 
he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real diabolical presence. 
The physician, who pretended to cure the disease, was himself irrecoverably 
infacted. Yet even this single step of Wierus was strenuously resisted by 
the learned Bodin, who, in his amusing volume of " Demonomanie des Sor- 
ciers," 1593, refutes Wierus. These are the leading authors of the 
times ; who were followed by a crowd. Thus James I. neither wanted 
authorities to quote nor great minds to sanction his " Dsemonologie," first 
published in 1597. To the honour of England, a single individual, 
Reginald Scot, with a genius far advanced beyond his age, denied the very 
existence of those witches and demons in the curious volume of his " Dis- 
covery of Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned! and the author 
was himself not quite out of danger ; and Voetius, says Bayle, complains 
that when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of 
libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of devils. 
Casaubon and GHanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot with profound 
contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and his philosophy ab- 



The Works of James the First. 399 

patriarchs of smoking-clubs were called, and who were selling 
their very lands and houses in an epidemical madness for 
" a stinking weed," by discovering that " they were making 
a sooty kitchen in their inward parts."* And the king gained 
a point with the great majority of his subjects, when he 
demonstrated to their satisfaction that the pope was anti- 
christ. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works them- 
selves were formed on what modern philosophers affect to 
term the principle of utility ; a principle which, with them 
indeed, includes everything they approve of, and nothing they 
dislike. 

It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his people, 
which seems to have been the urgent motive that induced 
this monarch to become an author, more than any literary 
ambition ; for he writes on no prepared or permanent topic, 
and even published anonymously, and as he once wrote " post- 
haste," what he composed or designed for practical and imme- 
diate use ; and even in that admirable treatise on the duties 
of a sovereign, which he addressed to Prince Henry, a great 
portion is directed to the exigencies of the times, the parties, 
and the circumstances of his own court. Of the works now 
more particularly noticed, their interest has ceased with the 
melancholy follies which at length have passed away ; although 
the philosophical inquirer will not choose to drop this chapter 
in the history of mankind. But one fact in favour of our 
royal author is testified by the honest Fuller and the cynical 
Osborne. On the king's arrival in England, having dis- 

surd ! Such was the reward of a man of genius combating with popular 
prejudices ! Even so late as 1687, these popular superstitions were con- 
firmed by the narrations and the philosophy of Grlanvil, Dr. More, &c. 
The subject enters into the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." 
An edict of Louis XIV. and a statute by George II. made an end of the 
whole Diablerie. Had James I. adopted the system of Reginald Scot, the 
king had probably been branded as an atheist king ! 

.* Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after abusing this 
tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had written a 
meaner one — quotes the curious information the king gives of the enormous 
abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, expressing his asto- 
nishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape bitter censure, he abuses 
the king for levying a heavy tax on it to prevent this ruinous consumption, 
and his silly policy in discouraging such a branch of our revenues, and an 
article so valuable to our plantations, &c. As if James I. could possibly 
incur censure for the discoveries of two centuries after, of the nature of 
this plant ! James saw great families ruined by the epidemic madness, 
and sacrificed the revenues which his crown might derive from it, to assist 
its suppression. This was patriotism in the monarch. 



400 Character of James the First. 

covered the numerous impostures and illusions which he had 
often referred to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the 
whole system of " Daemonologie," and at length recanted it 
entirely. With the same conscientious zeal James had 
written the book, the king condemned it ; and the sovereign 
separated himself from the author, in the cause of truth ; hut 
the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the 
imaginary crime felony by the statute, and it is only a recent 
act of parliament which has forbidden the appearance of the 
possessed and the spae-wife. 

But this apology for having written these treatises need 
not rest on this fact, however honourably it appeals to our 
candour. Let us place it on higher ground, and tell those 
who asperse this monarch for his credulity and intellectual 
weakness, that they themselves, had they lived in the reign 
of James I., had probably written on the same topics, and 
felt as uneasy at the rumour of a witch being a resident in 
their neighbourhood ! 



POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE. 

This and the succeeding age were the times of omens and 
meteors, prognostics and providences — of " day-fatality," or 
the superstition of fortunate and unfortunate days, and the 
combined powers of astrology and magic. It was only at the 
close of the century of James I. that Bayle wrote a treatise 
on comets, to prove that they had no influence in the cabinets 
of princes ; this was, however, done with all the precaution 
imaginable. The greatest minds were then sinking under 
such popular superstitions : and whoever has read much of the 
private history of this age will have smiled at their ludicrous 
terrors and bewildered reasonings. The most ordinary events 
were attributed to an interposition of Providence. In the 
unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, Sir Symonds 
D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a comet appeared, 
and D'Ewes, for exercise at college, had been ringing the 
great bell, and entangled himself in the rope, which had 
nearly strangled him, he resolves not to ring while the comet 
is in the heavens. When a fire happened at the Six Clerks' 
Office, of whom his father was one, he inquires into the most 
prominent sins of the six clerks : these were the love of the 
world, and doing business on Sundays : and it seems they 



Popular Superstitions of the Age. 401 

thought so themselves ; for after the fire the office-door was 
fast closed on the Sabbath. When the Thames had an un- 
usual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never hap- 
pened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the 
Earl of Essex in Elizabeth's reign, — and Sir Symonds became 
uneasy at the political aspect of affairs. 

All the historians of these times are very particular in 
marking the bearded beams of blazing stars ; and the first 
public event that occurs is always connected with the radiant 
course. Arthur Wilson describes one which preceded the 
death of the simple queen of James I. It was generally 
imagined that " this great light in the heaven was sent as a 
flambeaux to her funeral ;" but the historian discovers, while 
" this blaze was burning, the fire of war broke out in Bo- 
hemia." It was found difficult to decide between the two 
opinions ; and Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards, care- 
fully chronicles both. 

The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of James I. 
were as deeply concerned in these investigations as his 
Majesty. Had the great Verulam emancipated himself from 
all the dreams of his age ? He speaks indeed cautiously of 
witchcraft, but does not deny its occult agency ; and of astro- 
logy he is rather for the improvement than the rejection. 
The bold spirit of E-awleigh contended with the superstitions 
of the times ; but how feeble is the contest where we fear to 
strike ! Even Rawleigh is prodigal of his praise to James for 
the king's chapter on magic. The great mind of Rawleigh 
perceived how much men are formed and changed by educa- 
tion ; but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the stars 
would lose their influence ! In pleading for the free agency 
of man, he would escape from the pernicious tendency of pre- 
destination, or the astral influence, which yet he allows. To 
extricate himself from the dilemma, he invents an analogical 
reasoning of a royal power of dispensing with the laws in ex- 
treme cases ; so that, though he does not deny " the binding 
of the stars," he declares they are controllable by the will of 
the Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, 
he satisfies the superstitions of an astrological age, and the 
penetration of his own genius. At a much later period Dr. 
Henry More, a writer of genius, confirmed the ghost and 
demon creed, by a number of facts, as marvellously pleasant 
as any his own poetical fancy could have invented. Other 
great authors have not less distinguished themselves. When 



402 Character of James the First. 

has there appeared a single genius who at once could free 
himself of the traditional prejudices of his contemporaries — 
nay, of his own party ? Genius, in its advancement beyond 
the intelligence of its own age, is hut progressive ; it is fanci- 
fully said to soar, hut it only climbs. Yet the minds of some 
authors of this age are often discovered to be superior to their 
work; because the mind is impelled by its own inherent 
powers, but the work usually originates in the age. James I. 
once acutely observed, how " the author may be wise, but the 
work foolish." 

Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had not 
yet cleared themselves out of these clouds of popular preju- 
dices. We now proceed to more decisive results of the superior 
capacity of this much ill-used monarch. 



THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE OF A MAN 
OF LETTERS. 

The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man of 
letters. His first studies were soothed by none of their 
enticements. If James loved literature, it was for itself; for 
Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the vase with honey ; and 
the bitterness was tasted not only in the draught, but also in 
the rod. In some princes, the harsh discipline James passed 
through has raised a strong aversion against literature. The 
Dauphin, for whose use was formed the well-known edition of 
the classics, looked on the volumes with no eye of love. To 
free himself of his tutor, Huet, he eagerly consented to an 
early marriage. " Now we shall see if Mr. Huet shall any 
more keep me to ancient geography !" exclaimed the Dauphin, 
rejoicing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it 
is said, too deeply affected that learned man for many years 
afterwards. Huet's zealous gentleness (for how could Huet 
be too rigid ?) wanted the art which Buchanan disdained to 
practise. But, in the case of the prince of Scotland, a consti- 
tutional timidity combining with an ardour for study, and 
therefore a veneration for his tutor, produced a more remark- 
able effect. Such was the terror which the remembrance of 
this illustrious but inexorable republican left on the imagina- 
tion of his royal pupil, that even so late as when James was 
seated on the English throne, once the appearance of his 
frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king, who iu 



Habits of James I. those of a Man of Letters. 403 

vain attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This 
extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter of that 
day.* 

James, even by the confession of his bitter satirist, Francis 
Osborne, " dedicated rainy weather to his standish, and fair 
to his hounds." His life had the uniformity of a student's ; 
but the regulated life of a learned monarch must have weighed 
down the gay and dissipated with the deadliest monotony. 
Hence one of these courtiers declared that, if he were to awake 
after a sleep of seven years' continuance, he would undertake 
to enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, and 
every dish that had been placed on the table during the inter- 
val. But this courtier was not aware that the monotony 
which the king occasioned him was not so much in the king 
himself as in his own volatile spirit. 

The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more 
learned courtier, who often partook of these prolonged conver- 
sations : those genial and convivial conferences were the 
recreations of the king, and the means often of advancing 
those whose talents had then an opportunity of discovering 
themselves. A life so constant in its pursuits was to have 
been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of 
the Bodleian library, exclaimed, " Were I not a king, I would 

* The learned Mede wrote the present letter soon after another, -which 
had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stuteville ; and the writer 
is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring the parties into 
trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should be read and then 
burnt. 

"March 31, 1622. 

u I hope my letter miscarried not ; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I 
desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there 
is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is forgotten 
they will not be so safe ; but your danger is as great as mine 

" Mr. Downham was with me, now come from London. He told me that 
it was three years ago since those verses were delivered to the king in a 
dream, by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to check him severely, as he 
used to do ; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desirous to pacify him, 
but he, turning away with a frowning countenance, would utter those 
verses, which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, repeated the next day, 
and many took notice of them. Now, by occasion of the late soreness in 
his arm, and the doubtfulness what it would prove ; especially having, by 
mischance, fallen into the fire with that arm, the remembrance of the verses 
began to trouble him." 

It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a 
melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of three 
years ; the verses are lost to us, with the letter which contained them. 

dd2 



404 Character of James the First. 

be an university man ; and if it were so that I must be a 
prisoner, I would have no other prison than this library, and 
be chained together with all these goodly authors."* 

Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our 
contemplative monarch ; and so zealous was James to form his 
future successor, that he even seriously engaged in the educa- 
tion of both his sons. James I. offers the singular spectacle 
of a father who was at once a preceptor and a monarch : it 
was in this spirit the king composed his " Basilicon Doron ; 
or, His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the 
Prince," a work of which something more than the intention 
is great ; and he directed the studies of the unfortunate 
Charles. That both these princes were no common pupils 
may be fairly attributed to the king himself. Never did the 
character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises 
than Henry ; an enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince 
early showed a great and commanding spirit. Charles was a 
man of fine taste : he had talents and virtues, errors and mis- 
fortunes ; but he was not without a spirit equal to the days 
of his trial. 



FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION. 

The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a stu- 
dent's, delighting in the facility and copiousness of composi- 
tion. The king wrote in one week one hundred folio pages of 
a monitory address to the European sovereigns ; and, in as 
short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and cardinals. 
These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their 
use ; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete 
answer. " Qua felicitate they were done, let others judge ; but 
Qua celeritate, I can tell," says the courtly bishop who col- 
lected the king's works, and who is here quoted, not for the 
compliment he would infer, but for the fact he states. The 
week's labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron 
about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders 
from the learned in Europe. f 

* In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion has been 
probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then prevalent 
custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by chains long 
enough to reach to the reading-desks under them. 

+ Mr. Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History," praises and 
abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the 
sober character of the antiquary for the smarter one of the critic, tells us, 



405 



HIS ELOQUENCE. 

The eloquence of James is another feature in the literary 
character of this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of the 
court of a learned sovereign some truths will manifest them- 
selves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy of James I., 
has praised with warmth the eloquence of the departed 
monarch, whom he intimately knew ; and this was an acqui- 
sition of James's, so manifest to all, that the bishop made 
eloquence essential to the dignity of a monarch ; observing, 
that " it was the want of it that made Moses, in a manner, 
refuse all government, though offered by God." # He would 
not have hazarded so peculiar an eulogium, had not the 
monarch been distinguished by that talent. 

Hume first observed of James I., that " the speaker of 
the House of Commons is usually an eminent man ; yet the 
harangue of his Majesty will alwa}^s be found much superior 
to that of the speaker in every parliament during this reign." 
His numerous proclamations are evidently wrought by his 

"James had the good fortune to gain the two points he principally aimed 
at in the publication of these dull treatises — the reputation of an acute 
disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal Bellarmin for an antagonist." 
Did Mr. Lodge ever read these " dull treatises ?" I declare I never have ; 
but I believe these treatises are not dull, from the inference he draws from 
them : for how any writer can gain the reputation of "an acute dispu- 
tant" by writing " dull treatises, " Mr. Lodge only can explain. It is in 
this manner, and by unphilosophical critics, that the literary reputation of 
James has been flourished down by modern pens. It was sure game to 
attack James I. ! 

* This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the eloquence of 
James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the zealous bishop ; per- 
haps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising on the feelings of 
the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed frequent symptoms 
of impatience. 

This allusion to the stammering of Moses was most unlucky ; for Charles 
had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his Life to correct. In 
the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it : " Now, because / am 
unfit for much speaking, I mean to bring up the fashion of my predecessors, 
to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And he closed a 
speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does not offer to 
endear himself by words, which indeed is not my way." This, however, 
proved to be one of those little circumstances which produce a more im- 
portant result than is suspected. By this substitution of a lord-keeper 
Instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the personal affections of his 
parliament. Even the most gracious speech from the lips of a lord-keeper 
is but formally delivered, and coldly received ; and Charles had not yet 
learned that there are no deputies for our feelings. 



406 Character of James the First, 

own hand, and display the pristine vigour of the state of our 
age of genius. That the state-papers were usually composed 
by himself, a passage in the Life of the Lord-keeper Williams 
testifies ; and when Sir Edward Conway, who had been bred 
a soldier, and was even illiterate, became a viscount, and a 
royal secretary, by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, 
who in fact wanted no secretary, would often be merry over 
his imperfect scrawls in writing, and his hacking of sen- 
tences in reading, often breaking out in laughter, exclaiming, 
" Stenny has provided me with a secretary who can neither 
write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot 
truss my points," — this latter person having but one hand! 
It is evident, since Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary 
ever king had — and I have myself seen his scrawls — remained 
many years in office, that James I. required no secretary, and 
transacted his affairs with his own mind and hand. These 
habits of business and of study prove that James indulged 
much less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously 
accused. 



HIS WIT. 



Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual 
capacity of James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is 
imagined to have given in to every species of false wit, and 
never to have reached beyond quibbles, puns, conceits, and quo- 
libets, — was in truth a great wit ; quick in retort, and happy 
in illustration ; and often delivering opinions with a senten- 
tious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have 
descended to us than from any other of our sovereigns. One 
of the malicious writers of his secret history, Sir Anthony 
Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty, but describes 
the manner: " He was very witty, and had as many witty 
jests as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, 
but deliver them in a grave and serious manner." Thus the 
king was not only witty, but a dextrous wit : nor is he one 
of those who are recorded as having only said one good thing 
in their lives ; for his vein was not apt to dry. 

His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved 
to prolong at table. We find them described by one who had 
partaken of them : 

" The reading of some books before him was very frequent, 
while he was at his repast ; and otherwise he collected know- 



Specimens of his Humour, fyc. 407 

ledge by variety of questions, which he carved out to the 
capacity of different persons. Methought his hunting hu- 
mour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his 
board ; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, 
which he would wind and turn about with the most stabbing 
objections that ever I heard ; and was as pleasant and fellow- 
like, in all these discourses, as with his huntsman in the field. 
Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers were ever 
designed for some place of credit or profit."* 



SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVATIONS ON 
HUMAN LIFE. 

The relics of witticisms and observations on human life, on 
state affairs, in literature and history, are scattered among 
contemporary writers, and some are even traditional ; I regret 
that I have not preserved many which occurred in the course 
of reading. It has happened, however, that a man of genius 
has preserved for posterity some memorials of the wit, the 
learning, and the sense of the monarch. f 

In giving some loose specimens of the wit and capacity of 
a man, if they are too few, it may be imagined that they are 
so from their rarity ; and if too many, the page swells into a 

* Hacket's curious " Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38, 
Part 11. 

t IntheHarl, MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled " Crumms fallen from 
Bang James's Table ; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbury. 
The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, perhaps, 
imperfectly printed in " The Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of State," 
1715. This Collection of Sir Thomas Overbury was shortened by his 
unhappy fate, since he perished early in the reign. — Another Harl. MS. 
contains things " as they were at sundrie times spoken by James I." I 
have drawn others from the Harl. MSS. 6395. We have also printed, 
"Wittie Observations, gathered in King James's Ordinary Discourse," 
1643; " King James his Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they were by him 
delivered occasionally, and by the publisher, his quondam servant, care- 
fully received, by B. A. gent. 4°. in eight leaves, 1643." The collector 
was Ben 11 . Agar, who had gathered them in his youth; "Witty Apo- 
thegmes, delivered at several times by King James, King Charles, the 
Marquis of Worcester," &c, 1658. 

The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many 
instances of the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms new 
and old ; they are numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil Monta- 
gue, in his edition, has separated what he distinguishes as the spurious 
ones. 



408 Character of James the First. 

mere collection. But truth is not over-nice to obtain her 
purpose, and even the common labours she inspires are asso- 
ciated with her pleasures. 

Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt allu- 
sion, and his classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He 
expected no other favour from them than the courtesy of 
Polyphemus to Ulysses — to be the last devoured," delighted 
Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur 
Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," has pre- 
served one of his apothegms, while he censures him for not 
making timely use of it! "Let that prince, who would 
beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such whom his 
extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his 
displeasure have discontented. These want means to 
execute their pleasures, but those have means at pleasure to 
execute their desires." — Wilson himself ably develops this 
important state-observation, by adding, that " Ambition to 
rule is more vehement than malice to revenge." A pointed 
reflection, which rivals a maxim of Eochefoucault. 

The king observed that, " Very wise men and very fools 
do little harm ; it is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth 
all the world." — He described, by a lively image, the diffe- 
rences which rise in argument : " Men, in arguing, are often 
carried by the force of words farther asunder than their ques- 
tion was at first ; like two ships going out of the same haven, 
their landing is many times whole countries distant." 

One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both 
to the government and the people, in James's reign, was the 
perpetual growth of the metropolis ; and the nation, like an 
hypochondriac, was ludicrously terrified that their head was 
too monstrous for their body, and drew all the moisture of 
life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to observe the 
endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new build- 
ings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their 
country mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but 
the very interference of prohibition rendered the crowded 
town more delightful. One of its attendant calamities was 
the prevalent one of that day, the plague ; and one of those 
state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed, 
entitled, " Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge 
of new buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in 
one another's faces ; and your Majesty has most truly said, 
England will shortly be London, and London, England." It 



Specimens of his Humour, §•<?. 409 

was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should reside 
more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the king 
made that admirable allusion, which has been in our days re- 
peated in the House of Commons : " Gentlemen resident on 
their estates were like ships in port — their value and magni- 
tude were felt and acknowledged ; but, when at a distance, as 
their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and importance 
were not duly estimated." The king abounded with similar 
observations ; for he drew from life more than even from 
books. 

James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity ; 
notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself on what he 
denominated " king's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and 
domestic prince ! 

"A king," said James, "ought to be a preserver of his 
people, as well of their fortunes as lives, and not a destroyer 
of his subjects. Were I to make such a war as the King of 
France doth, with such tyranny on his own subjects — with 
Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to slaughter 
on the other, — I would put myself in a monastery all my 
days after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to 
such misery." 

That James was an adept in his " king's-craft," by which 
term he meant the science of politics, but which has been so 
often misinterpreted in an ill sense, even the confession of 
such a writer as Sir Anthony Weldon testifies ; who acknow- 
ledges that " no prince living knew how to make use of men 
better than King James." He certainly foresaw the spirit of 
the Commons, and predicted to the prince and Buckingham, 
events which occurred after his death. When Cranfield, Earl 
of Middlesex, whom James considered a useful servant, Buck- 
ingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the clamours of a 
party, James said, "You are making a rod for your own 
back ;" and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent 
petitions of the Commons, James told him, " You will live to 
have your bellyful of petitions." The following anecdote 
may serve to prove his political sagacity : — When the Em- 
peror of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own state- 
interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited 
from James the aid of three thousand Englishmen ; the wise 
and pacific monarch, in return, advised the emperor's ambas- 
sador to apply to France and Spain, as being more nearly 
concerned in this project : but the ambassador very inge- 



410 Character of James the First. 

niously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would 
more effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general 
armament of the Christian princes against them. James got 
rid of the importunate ambassador by observing, that " three 
thousand Englishmen would do no more hurt to the Turks 
than fleas to their skins : great attempts may do good by a 
destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt them- 
selves." 

His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his 
facetiousness was sometimes indulged at the cost of his 
royalty. In those unhappy differences between him and his 
parliament, one day mounting his horse, which, though 
usually sober and quiet, began to bound and prance, — 
" Sirrah !" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his 
favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, 
" if you be not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings 
in the lower house : they'll quickly tame you." When one 
of the Lumleys was pushing on his lineal ascent beyond the 
patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short the tedious de- 
scendant of the Lumleys, cried out, " Stop mon ! thou needst 
no more ; now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley !" 
When Colonel Gray, a military adventurer of that day, just 
returned from Germany, seemed vain of his accoutrements, on 
which he had spent his all, — the king, staring at this 
buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined, martinet, 
observed, that " this town was so well fortified, that, were it 
victualled, it might be impregnable." 



EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF 
TRUTH. 

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and 
the diversified knowledge which produced his " Table-talk," we 
find also many evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of 
truth, with that patient zeal so honourable to a monarch. 
When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett, our great naval archi- 
tect, formed a party against him, the king would judge with 
his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by 
Pett's accusers, he declared that " the cross-grain was in the 
men, not in the timber." The king, on historical evidence, 
and by what he said in his own works, claims the honour of 
discovering the gunpowder plot, by the sagacity and reflection 



His Sagacity in the Discovery of Truth. 411 

with which he solved the enigmatical and ungrammatical 
letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has 
even been preserved to us ; and, although a loose passage, in a 
private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another 
passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was 
the man ; yet even Mrs. Macaulay acknowledges the pro- 
priety of attributing the discovery to the king's sagacity. 
Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the detection of 
imposture might be adduced j and the reader may, perhaps, 
be amused at these. 

There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter 
by Lady Lake, and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had 
contrived to forge a letter in the Countess's name, in which 
she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused her of, which 
were incest, witchcraft, &c. ;* and, to confirm its authenticity, 
as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and 
the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it 
was at the countess's house at Wimbledon, and that she had 
written it at the window, near the upper end of the great 
chamber • and that she (the maid) was hid beneath the 
tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter 
after writing. The king appeared satisfied with this new 
testimony ; but, unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber 
at Wimbledon, observed the distance of the window, placed 
himself behind the hangings, and made the lords in their 
turn : not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person 
placed at the window. The king further observed, that the 
tapestry was two feet short of the ground, and that any one 
standing behind it must inevitably be discovered. " Oaths 
cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the king. Having 
also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one of 
the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of 
James, as he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued 
him, desired he would not stand the trial with his wife and 
daughter ; but the old man pleaded that he was a husband 
and a father, arid must fall with them. "It is a fall!" said 
the king : " your wife is the serpent ; your daughter is Eve ; 
and you, poor man, are Adam !"f 

* Camden's " Annals of James I., Kennet II., &52." 
+ The snit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,O00Z. ; the fines in the star-chamber 
were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause as an evidence 
of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was always influenced by 
personal dislike ; but he does not give the story. 



412 Character of James the First. 

The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, "I must confess he 
was the promptest man living in detecting an imposture." 
There was a singular impostor in his reign, of whom no one 
denies the king the merit of detecting the deception — so far 
was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally sup- 
posed to have been. Ridiculous as the affair may appear to 
us, it had perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New 
College, Oxford, and afterwards with heads as deep ; and it 
required some exertion of the king's philosophical reasoning 
to pronounce on the deception. 

One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preacher, 
but had a stuttering and slowness of utterance, which he 
could not get rid of, took to the study of physic ; but recol- 
lecting that, when at Winchester, his schoolfellows had told 
him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried, affecting to 
be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. Finding that he 
succeeded, he continued the practice : he then tried divinity, 
and spoke a good sermon. Having prepared one for the pur- 
pose, he sat up in his bed and delivered it so loudly that it 
attracted attention in the next chamber, It was soon reported 
that Haddock preached in his sleeep ; and nothing was heard 
but inquiries after the sleeping preacher, who soon found it 
his interest to keep up the delusion. He was now considered 
as a man truly inspired ; and he did not in his own mind rate 
his talents at less worth than the first vacant bishopric. He 
was brought to court, where the greatest personages anxiously 
sat up through the night by his bedside. They tried all the 
maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him : he was with- 
out hearing or feeling ; but they never departed without an 
orderly text and sermon ; at the close of which, groaning and 
stretching himself, he pretended to awake, declaring he was 
unconscious of what had passed. " The king," says Wilson, 
no flatterer of James, "privately handled him so like a 
chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was pre- 
sent at one of these sermons, and forbade them ; and his 
reasonings, on this occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on 
his knees. The king observed, that things studied in the 
day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but always irregu- 
larly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and 
learned : as particularly the one preached before his Majesty 
in his sleep — which he first treated physically, then theologi- 
cally ; "and I observed," said the king, "that he always 
preaches best when he has the most crowded audience." 



Basilicon Dor on. 413 

" Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might 
pass under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, not- 
withstanding his pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping 
preacher for ever afterwards. 



BASILICON DORON. 

That treatise of James I., entitled " Basilicon Doron ; or, 
His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the 
Prince," was composed by the king in Scotland, in the fresh- 
ness of his studious days ; a work, addressed to a prince by a 
monarch which, in some respects, could only have come from 
the hands of such a workman. The morality and the politics 
often retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author 
has drawn his principles of government from the classical 
volumes of antiquity ; for then politicians quoted Plato, 
Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed, flowed over 
those beds of ore ; # but the growth and vigour of the work 
comes from the mind of the king himself : he writes for the 
Prince of Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its 
first appearance Camden has recorded the strong sensation it 
excited : it was not only admired, but it entered into and 
won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge, in 
his mean style and with his frigid temper, that " this book 
contains some tolerable things," omits not to hint that "it 
might not be his own :" but the claims of James I. are evi- 
dent from the peculiarity of the style ; the period at which 
it was composed ; and by those particular passages stamped 
with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is 
remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French 
words, where the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelli- 
gent expression of the other, offer curious instances of the 
influence of manners over language ; the diction of the royal 
author is a striking evidence of the intermixture of the two 
nations, and of a court which had marked its divided inte- 
rests by its own chequered language. 

This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind ; like 
one of those antique and curious pictures we sometimes dis- 

* James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of the ancient his- 
torians, as appears from an accidental expression of Buchanan's, in his 
dedication to James of his "Baptistes;" referring to Sallust, he adds, 
apud tuum Salustium. 



414 Character of James the First. 

cover in a cabinet, — studied for the costume ; yet where the 
touches of nature are true, although the colouring is brown 
and faded ; but there is a force, and sometimes even a charm, 
in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste 
may return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son : — 

" Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their 
prince's example, in your own person make your wordes and 
deedes to fight together ; and let your own life be a law- 
book and a mirror to your people, that therein they may read 
the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what 
life they should lead. 

" But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this 
kingdome subject, as well burgh as land ; which is, to judge 
and speak rashly of their prince, setting the commonweale 
vpon foure props, as wee call it ; euer wearying of the pre- 
sent estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king 
suggests, " besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed 
against vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that " the sub- 
jects may not only live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred 
up to open their mouthes in your iust praise." 



JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING. 

The royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on their 
first entrance into the government : — 

" A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast 
under foot, and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst 
forth." He advises the prince to act contrary to Nero, who, 
at first, " with his tender-hearted wish, vellem nescire lite- 
ms" appeared to lament that he was to execute the laws. 
He, on the contrary, would have the prince early show " the 
severitie of justice, which will settle the country, and make 
them know that ye can strike : this would be but for a time. 
If otherwise ye kyth (show) your clemencie at the first the 
offences would soon come to such heapes, and the contempt 
of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to punish the 
number to be punished would exceed the innocent ; and ye 
would, against your nature, be compelled then to wracke 
manie, whom the chastisement of few in the beginning 
might have preserved. In this my own dear-bought expe- 
rience may serve you for a different lesson. For I confess, 
where I thought (by being gracious at the beginning) to 



James the First's Idea of a Tyrant and a King. 415 

gain all men's heart to a loving and willing obedience, I by 
the contrarie found the disorder of the countrie, and the loss 
of my thanks, to be all my reward." 

James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince 
by his own errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of 
these was an excess of the kinder impulses in granting 
favours ; there was nothing selfish in his happiness ; James 
seemed to wish that every one around him should participate 
in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always 
open to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not 
always on unworthy favourites, but often on learned men 
whose talents he knew well to appreciate. There was a 
warmth in the king's temper which once he himself well 
described ; he did not like those who pride themselves on 
their tepid dispositions. " I love not one that will never be 
angry, for as he that is without sorrow is without gladness, 
so he that is without anger is without love. Give me the 
heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be ac- 
ceptable." The king thus addresses the prince : — 

On the Choice of Servants and Associates. 

" Be not moved with importunities ; for the which cause, 
as also for augmenting your Maiestie, be not so facile of 
access-giving at all times, as I have been." — In his minority, 
the choice of his servants had been made by others, " re- 
commending servants unto me, more for serving, in effect, 
their friends that put them in, than their maister that ad- 
mitted them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised 
against me. Chuse you your own servantes for your own 
vse, and not for the vse of others ; and. since ye must be 
communis parens to all your people, chuse indifferentlie out of 
all quarters ; not respecting other men's appetites, but their 
own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason 
would ye should be served of all. — Be a daily watchman 
over your own servants, that they obey your laws precisely : 
for how can your laws be kept in the country, if they be 
broken at your eare ! — Bee homelie or strange with them, as 
ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear 
ill. — Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use 
not one in all things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by 
his fellows. — As for the other sort of your companie and ser- 
vants, they ought to be of perfect age, see they be of a good 
fame ; otherwise what can the people think but that ye have 



416 Character of James the First. 

chosen a companion unto you according to your own humour, 
and so have preferred those men for the love of their vices 
and crimes, that ye knew them to be guiltie of. For the 
people, that see you not within, cannot judge of you but ac- 
cording to the outward appearance of your actions and com- 
pany, which only is subject to their sight." 



THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE. 

James I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti-Mon- 
archists, or revolutionists, of his time. 

He describes " their imagined democracie, where they fed 
themselves with the hope to become tribuni plebi ; and so, in 
a popular government, by leading the people by the nose, to 
bear the sway of all the rule. — Every faction," he adds, 
" always joined them. I was ofttimes calumniated in their 
popular sermons, not for any evill or vice in me,* but because 
I was a king, which they thought the highest evill ; and, 
because they were ashamed to professe this quarrel, they were 
busie to look narrowly in all my actions, pretending to dis- 
tinguish the lawfulness of the office from the vice of the 
person ; yet some of them would snapper out well grossly 
with the trewth of their intentions, informing the people 
that all kings and princes were naturally enemies to the 
liberties of the Church ; whereby the ignorant were embol- 
dened (as bayards) 5 fto cry the learned and modest out of it : 
but their parity is the mother of confusion, and enemie to 
vnitie, which is the mother of order." And it is not with- 
out eloquence his Majesty describes these factious Anti-Mon- 
archists," as " Men, whom no deserts can oblige, neither 
oaths nor promises bind; breathing nothing but sedition 
and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without 
reason, and making their own imaginations the square of 
their conscience. I protest, before the great God, and, since 
I am here as vpon my testament, it is no place for me to lie 
in, that ye shall never find with any Hie-land, or Border 

* The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise from one 
of his bitterest calumniators ; for Mrs. Macaulay has said — " His conduct, 
when King of Scotland, was in many points uu exceptionable." 

f An old French word, expressing, "A man that gapes or gazes ear- 
nestly at a thing; a fly-catcher ; a greedy and unmannerly beholder." — 
Cotgrave. 



Of the Nobility of Scotland. — Of Colonising. 417 

theeves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile perjuries : 
ye may keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an 
evill wife." 






OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND. 

The king makes three great divisions of the Scottish people : 
the church, the nobility, and the burghers. 

Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check 

" A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power, 
drinking in with their very nourish-milk. Teach your 
nobilitie to keep your lawes, as precisely as the meanest ; fear 
not their orping, or being discontented, as long as ye rule 
well : for their pretended reformation of princes taketh never 
effect, but where evil government proceedeth. Acquaint 
yourself so with all the honest men of your barone and gen- 
tlemen, giving access so open and affable, to make their own 
suites to you themselves, and not to employ the great lordes, 
their intercessours ; so shall ye bring to a measure their 
monstrous backes. And for their barbarous feides (feuds), 
put the laws to due execution made by mee there-anent ; be- 
ginning ever rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished 
vnto you, to make him an example to the rest. Make all 
your reformations to begin at your elbow, and so by degrees 
to the extremities of the land." 

He would not, however, that the prince should highly con- 
temn the nobility : " Eemember, howe that error brake the 
king, my grandfather's heart. Consider that vertue followeth 
oftest noble blood : the more frequently that your court can 
be garnished with them, as peers and fathers of your land, 
thinke it the more your honour." 

He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to embrace 
the quarrel of the poor and the sufferer, and to remember the 
honourable title given to his grandfather, in being called 
" The poor man's king." 



OF COLONISING. 

James I. had a project of improving the state of those that 
dwelt in the isles, "who are so utterly barbarous," by inter- 
mixing some of the semi-civilised Highlanders, and planting 
colonies among them of inland subjects. 

E E 



418 Character of James the First. 

" I have already made laws against the over-lords, and the 
chief of their clannes, and it would be no difficultie to danton 
them ; so rooting out, or transporting the barbarous and stub- 
born sort, and planting civilised in their rooms." 

This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher could 
have suggested, and, with the conduct he subsequently pursued 
in Ireland, may be referred to as splendid proofs of the kingly 
duties so zealously performed by this monarch. 



OP MERCHANTS. 

Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial cha- 
racter, he had no honourable notion. 

He says, " They think the whole commonwealth ordained 
for raising them up, and accounting it their lawful gain to 
enrich themselves upon the losses of the rest of the people." 

We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political 
economy, which then had not assumed the dignity of a science ; 
his rude and simple ideas convey popular truths. 



REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS. 

The last portion of the " Basilicon Doron" is devoted to do- 
mestic regulations for the prince, respecting his manners and 
habits ; which the king calls " the indifferent actions of a 
man." 

" A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest actions 
and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold ; and, however 
just in the discharge of his office, yet, if his behaviour be 
light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see 
but the outward part, conceive pre-occupied conceits of the 
king's inward intention, which, although with time, the trier 
of truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, 
yet interim patitur Justus, and pre-judged conceits will, in the 
meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and dis- 
order. Besides," the king adds, "the indifferent actions and 
behaviour of a man have a certain holding and dependence 
upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or ruled." 

The prince is not to keep regular hours, 

" That any time in the four and twentie hours may be alike 



Regulations for the Prince's Manners and Habits. 419 

to you; thereby your diet may be accommodated to your 
affairs, and not your affairs to your diet." 

The prince is to eat in public, " to shew that he loves not 
to haunt companie, which is one of the marks of a tyrant, 
and that he delights not to eat privatelie, ashamed of his 
gluttonie." As a curious instance of the manners of the 
times, the king advises the prince " to use mostly to eat of 
reasonablie-grosse and common-meats ; not only for making 
your bodie strong for travel, as that ye may be the hartlier 
received by your meane subiects in their houses, when their 
cheere may suffice you, which otherwaies would be imputed 
to you for pride, and breed coldness and disdain in them." 

I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other 
affectations of style in speaking. 

He adds, " Let it be plaine, natural, comelie, cleane, short, 
and sententious." 

In his gestures " he is neither to look sillily, like a stupid 
pedant ; nor unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new- 
come-over cavalier ; not over sparing in your courtesies, for 
that will be imputed to incivilitie and arrogance ; nor yet 
over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step, for that 
forme of being popular becometh better aspiring Absaloms 
than lawful kings ; forming ever your gesture according to 
your present action ; looking gravely, and with a majestie, 
when ye sit upon judgment, or give audience to embassadors ; 
homely, when ye are in private with your own servants ; 
merrily, when ye are at any pastime, or merry discourse ; and 
let your countenance smell of courage and magnanimity 
when at the warres. And remember (I say again) to be 
plaine and sensible in your language; for besides, it is the 
tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind ; it may be 
thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak 
obscurely, much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any 
in uttering his thoughts." 

Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds — 

" If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, 
either in prose or verse, I cannot but allow you to practise 
it ; but take no longsome works in hande, for distracting you 
from your calling." 

He reminds the prince with dignity and truth, 

" Your writes (writings) will remain as the true picture of 
your minde, to all posterities ; if yee would write worthelie, 
chuse subjects worthie of you." His critical conception of 

E E 2 



420 Character of James the First. 

the nature of poetry is its best definition. " If ye write in 
verse, remember that it is not the principal part of a poem to 
rime right, and flow well with many prettie wordes ; but the 
chief commendation of a poem is, that when the verse shall 
bee taken sundry in prose, it shall be found so ritch in quick 
inventions and poetick floures, and in fair and pertinent com- 
parisons, as it shall retain the lustre of a poem although in 
prose." 

The king proceeds touching many curious points concern- 
ing the prince's bodily exercises and "house-pastimes." A 
genuine picture of the customs and manners of the age : our 
royal author had the eye of an observer, and the thoughtful- 
ness of a sage. 

The king closes with the hope that the prince's " natural 
inclination will have a happie simpathie with these precepts ; 
making the wise man's schoolmaister, which is the example 
of others, to be your teacher ; and not that overlate repen- 
tance by your own experience, which is the schoolmaister of 
fools." 

Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart of 
James I. The volume remains a perpetual witness to pos- 
terity of the intellectual capacity and the noble disposition 
of the royal author. 

But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both by 
the political and religious ; as far as these aspersions connect 
themselves with his character, they enter into our inquiry. 

His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted by 
democratic writers, with the furious zeal of those who are 
doing the work of a party ; they never separate the character 
of James from his speculative principles of government ; and, 
such is the odium they have raised against him, that this 
sovereign has received the execration, or the ridicule, even of 
those who do not belong to their party. James maintained 
certain abstract doctrines of the times, and had written on 
" The Prerogative Eoyal," and " The Trew Laws of Free 
Monarchies," as he had on witches and devils. All this 
verbal despotism is artfully converted into so many acts of 
despotism itself; and thus they contrive their dramatic exhi- 
bition of a blustering tyrant, in the person of a father of his 
people, who exercised his power without an atom of brutal 
despotism adhering to it. 



421 



THE KING'S IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 

When" James asserted that a king is above the laws, he did 
not understand this in the popular sense ; nor was he the in- 
ventor or the reviver of similar doctrines. In all his mys- 
terious flights on the nature of " The Prerogative Royal," 
James only maintained what Elizabeth and all the Tudors 
had, as jealously, but more energetically exercised.* Eliza- 
beth left to her successor the royal prerogative strained to its 
highest pitch, with no means to support a throne which in 
the succeeding reign was found to be baseless. The king 
employed the style of absolute power, and, as Harris says, 
" entertained notions of his prerogative amazingly great, and 
bordering on impiety." It never occurred to his calumniators, 
who are always writing, without throwing themselves back 
into the age of their inquiries, that all the political reveries, 
the abstract notions, and the metaphysical fancies of James I. 
arose from his studious desire of being an English sovereign, 
according to the English constitution — for from thence he de- 
rived those very ideas. 



THE LAWYERS' IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 

The truth is, that lawyers, in their anxiety to define, or to 
defend the shadowy limits of the royal prerogative, had con- 
trived some strange and clumsy fictions to describe its 
powers ; their flatteries of the imaginary being, whom they 
called the sovereign, are more monstrous than all the harm- 
less abstractions of James I. 

They describe an English sovereign as a mysterious being, 
invested with absolute perfection, and a fabulous immor- 
tality, whose person was inviolable by its sacredness. A king 
of England is not subject to death, since the sovereign is a 

* In Sir Symund D'Ewes's " Journals of the Parliament, " and in Towns- 
hend's " Historical Collections," we trace in some degree Elizabeth's arbi- 
trary power concealed in her prerogative, which she always considered as 
the dissolving charm in the magical circle of our constitution. But I pos- 
sess two letters of the French ambassador to Charles IX. , written from our 
court in her reign ; who, by means of his secret intercourse with those about 
her person, details a curious narrative of a royal interview granted to some 
deputies of the parliament, at that moment refractory, strongly depicting 
the exalted notions this great sovereign entertained of the prerogative, and 
which she asserted in stamping her foot. 



422 Character of James the First. 

corporation, expressed by the awful plural the otjr and the 
we. His majesty is always of full age, though in infancy ; 
and so unlike mortality, the king can do no wrong. Such his 
ubiquity, that he acts at the same moment in different places ; 
and such the force of his testimony, that whatever the sove- 
reign declares to have passed in his presence, becomes 
instantly a perpetual record ; he serves for his own witness, by 
the simple subscription of Teste me ipso ; and he is so abso- 
lute in power, beyond the laws, that he quashes them by his 
negative voice.* Such was the origin of the theoretical pre- 
rogative of an ideal sovereign which James I. had formed : 
it was a mere curious abstraction of the schools in the spirit 
of the age, which was perpetually referring to the mysteries 
of state and the secrets of empires, and not a principle he was 
practising to the detriment of the subject. 

James I. while he held for his first principle that a sove- 
reign is only accountable to God for the sins of his govern- 
ment, an harmless and even a noble principle in a religious 
prince, at various times acknowledged that " a king is ordained 
for procuring the prosperity of his people." In his speech, 
1603, he says, 

" If you be rich I cannot be poor ; if you be happy I can- 
not but be fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in your 
prosperity. And that I am a servant is most true, as I am a 
head and governour of all the people in my dominions. If 
we take the people as one body, then as the head is ordained 
for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous 
king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his 
people for him." 

The truth is always concealed by those writers who are 
cloaking their antipathy against monarchy, in their declama- 
tions against the writings of James I. Authors, who are so 
often influenced by the opinions of their age, have the melan- 
choly privilege of perpetuating them, and of being cited as 
authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous. 

At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden 

* Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be found in 
Co well's curious book, entitled " The Interpreter." The reader may fur- 
ther trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence, dig- 
nifying the venerable nonsense — and the commentator on Blackstone some- 
times labouring to explain the explanations of his master ; so obscure, so 
abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers conjured 
up, and which the moderns cannot lay. 



TJie Lawyers' Idea of the Royal Prerogative. 423 

in the constitution, were jet obscure and contested ; involved 
in contradiction, in assertion and recantation ;* and they have 
been established as much by the blood as by the ink of our 
patriots. Some noble spirits in the Commons were then 
struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our govern- 
ment ; but often their private passions were infused into their 
public feelings ; James, who was apt to imagine that these 
individuals were instigated by a personal enmity in aiming at 
his mysterious prerogative, and at the same time found their 
rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions, retreated 
still farther into the depths and arcana of the constitution. 
Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this 
monarch through optical instruments not invented in his days. 
When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king's royal 
prerogative being unlimited and undefined, " was a great 
overgrown monster ;" and, on one occasion, when Coke said 
before the king, that "his Majesty was defended by the laws,'* 
— James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said 
he was not defended by the laws, but b} r Grod (alluding to his 
" divine right ") ; and sharply reprimanded him for having 
spoken irreverently of Sir Thomas Crompton, a civilian ; 
asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as Coke. The 
fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the 
common lawyers. Coke declared that the common law of 
England was in imminent danger of being perverted ; that 
law which he has enthusiastically described as the perfection 
of all sense and experience. Coke was strenuously opposed by 
Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length com- 
mitted to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, 
for the cause is obscure in our history), " charged with speak- 
ing so in parliament as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts 
against their sovereign. "f Yet in all this we must not 

* Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in contradictory 
positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the Commons, on 
opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed at his life, 
which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of the unsettled 
principles of liberty at that time ; Cowell was compelled to appeal to one 
part of his book to save himself from the other. 

+ The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not been pub- 
lished. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times : on that 
occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the firmness of 
a great spirit. 

Nov. 19, 1616. 

" The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown 
him from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir 



424 Character of James the First. 

regard James as the despot he is represented : he acted as 
Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own 
person, and the integrity of the constitution. In the same 
manuscript letter I find that, when at Theobalds, the king, 
with his usual openness, was discoursing how he designed to 
govern; and as he would sometimes, like the wits of all 
nations and times, compress an argument into a play on words, 
— the king said, " I will govern according to the good of the 
common-weal, but not according to the common-will /" 

George Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and 
tears. Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem. I send 
you a distich on the Lord Coke — 

Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure 
Non potuit ; pptuit condere jura cocis." 

It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being 
punned on, both in Latin and in English : for he was lodged in the Tower, 
in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one 
had written on the door, which he read at his entrance — 
" This room has long wanted a Cook." 

" The Prince interceding lately for Edward Coke, his Majesty answered, 
1 He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of 
Mr. Coke, his Majesty still answered, ' He knew none of that name nei- 
ther ; but he knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction 
in parliament.'" 

In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arun- 
del was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him 
that his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned 
in the law to advise him for his cause, Coke thanked the king, but he knew 
himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in 
England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the 
law. He knew his Majesty might easily find, in such a one as he, whereby 
to take away his head ; but for this he feared not what could be said. 

" I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, " that by law, he that 
should go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king was a 
traitor." Sir Edward answered, " That he held him an arch-traitor." 

James I. said of Coke, " That he had so many shifts that, throw him 
where you would, he still fell upon his legs." 

This affair ended with putting Sir Edward Coke on his knees before the 
council-table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his book 
of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This part of 
Coke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's " Biographical 
Dictionary." 



425 



THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY 
CHARACTER. 

But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this pre- 
sumed despot concerning the duties of a sovereign ? His 
Platonic conceptions inspired the most exalted feelings ; but 
his gentle nature never led to one act of unfeeling despotism. 
His sceptre was wreathed with the roses of his fancy : the 
iron of arbitrary power only struck into the heart in the 
succeeding reign. James only menaced with an abstract 
notion ; or, in anger, with his own hand would tear out a 
protestation from the journals of the Commons : and, when 
he considered a man as past forgiveness, he condemned him to 
a slight imprisonment ; or removed him to a distant employ- 
ment ; or, if an author, like Coke and Cowell, sent him into 
retirement to correct his works. 

In a great court of judicature, when the interference of the 
royal authority was ardently solicited, the magnanimous 
monarch replied : — 

" Kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of 
nature ; and ought as rarely to put in use their supreme 
authority as God does his power of working miracles." 

Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge and 
reflection showed him that there is a crisis in monarchies and 
a period in empires ; and in discriminating between a king 
and a tyrant, he tells the prince — 

" A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end 
his own subjects to become his burreaux ; and although this 
rebellion be ever unlawful on their part, yet is the world so 
wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned (minded) by the 
rest of his subiects, and smiled at by his neighbours." 

And he desires that the prince, his son, should so perform 
his royal duties, that, " In case ye fall in the highway, yet it 
should be with the honourable report and just regret of all 
honest men." In the dedicatory sonnet to Prince Henry of 
the "Basilicon Doron," in verses not without elevation, James 
admonishes the prince to 

Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right ; 

Walk always so, as ever in his sight, 

Who guards the godly, plaguing the prophane. 

The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man of 
learning and meditation. Such an one could not fail of pro- 



426 Character of James the First. 

ducing lines which reflect the mind of their author. I find 
in a MS. these couplets, which condense an impressive thought 
on a favourite subject :— 

Crownes have their compasse, length of daies their date, 
Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate ; 
Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker ; 
But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker. * 

These are among the elevated conceptions the king had 
formed of the character of a sovereign, and the feeling was 
ever present in his mind. James has preserved an anecdote 
of Henry VIII., in commenting on it, which serves our 
purpose : — 

" It was strange," said James I., " to look into the life of 
Henry VIII., how like an epicure he lived! Henry once 
asked, whether he might be saved ? He was answered, ' That 
he had no cause to fear, having lived so mighty a king.' 
' But, oh !' said he, ' 1 have lived too like a king.' He should 
rather have said, not like a king — for the office of a king is 
to do justice and equity ; but he only served his sensuality, 
like a beast." 

Henry VII. was the favourite character of James I. ; and 
it was to gratify the king that Lord Bacon wrote the life of 
this wise and prudent monarch. It is remarkable of James I., 
that he never mentioned the name of Elizabeth without some 
expressive epithet of reverence ; such as, " The late queen of 
famous memory ;" a circumstance not common among kings, 
who do not like to remind the world of the reputation of a 
great predecessor. But it suited the generous temper of that 
man to extol the greatness he admired, whose philosophic 
toleration was often known to have pardoned the libel on 
himself for the redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his for- 
giving temper, James I. would call such effusions " the super- 
fluities of idle brains." 



"THE BOOK OF SPORTS." 

But while the mild government of this monarch has been 
covered with the political odium of arbitrary power, he has 
also incurred a religious one, from his design of rendering the 
Sabbath a day for the poor alike of devotion and enjoyment, 
hitherto practised in England, as it is still throughout 

* "Harl. MSS " 6824, 



" The Book of Sports." 427 

Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in 
Elizabeth's reign; and yet " the Protestants of Elizabeth" 
was the usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most 
honour to the reformed. The king, returning from Scotland, 
found the people in Lancashire discontented, from the unusual 
deprivation of their popular recreations on Sundays and holi- 
days, after the church service. " With our own ears we 
heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic 
priests were busily insinuating among the lower orders that 
the reformed religion was a sullen deprivation of all mirth and 
social amusements, and thus "turning the people's hearts." 
But while they were denied what the king terms " lawful 
recreations,"* they had substituted more vicious ones: ale- 
houses were more frequented — drunkenness more general — 
tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, 
prevailed — while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the 
country. 

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised 
with the multitude, and perhaps alarmed at this new shape 
which puritanism was assuming, published what is called 
"The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the con- 
temptuous term of "The Dancing Book." 

On this subject our recent principles have governed our 
decisions : with our habits formed, and our notions finally ad- 
justed, this singular state-paper has been reprobated by piety ; 
whose zeal, however, is not sufficiently historical. It was 
one of the state maxims of this philosophic monarch, in his 
advice to his son, 

" To allure the common people to a common amitie among 
themselves ; and that certain daies in the yeere should be ap- 
pointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all 
honest games and exercise of arms ; making playes and lawful 
games inMaie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for conve- 
ning of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, 
by honest feasting and merriness ; so that the sabbothes be kept 
holie, and no unlawful pastime be used. This form of con- 
tenting the people's minds hath been used in all well-governed 
republics." 

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy 
among the people. In Europe, even among the reformed 

* These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, 
May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, 
and other manly sports. 



428 Character of James the First. 

themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a festival- 
day ; and the wise monarch could discover no reason why, in 
his kingdom, it should prove a day of penauce and self-denial : 
but when once this unlucky " Book of Sports " was thrown 
among the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, 
that everything concerning the nature of the Sabbath was 
uncertain. 



THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY. 

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The 
controversy was carried to an extremity in the succeeding 
reign. The proper hour of the Sabbath was not agreed on : 
Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve ? Others thought 
that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at 
was not important, provided the due portion be completed. 
Another declared, in his "Sunday no Sabbath," that it was 
merely an ecclesiastical day which may be changed at plea- 
sure ; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva, 
to Thursday, — probably from their antipathy to the Catholic 
Sunday, as the early Christians had anciently changed it from 
the Jewish Saturday. This had taken place, had the Thurs- 
day voters not formed the minority. Another asserted, that 
Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the per- 
petual Sabbath.* Some deemed the very name of Sunday 
profaned the Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon 
idolatry of that day being dedicated to the Sun ; and hence 
they sanctified it with the " Lord's-day." Others were 
strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the 
Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law ; for- 
bidding meat to be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c, — 
the day of rest was to be a day of mortification. But this 
spread an alarm, that " the old rotten ceremonial law of the 
Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus," was 
about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of 
opinion, that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic 
austerity, some were for rejecting " Lord's-days " altogether ; 
asserting, they needed not any ; because, in their elevated 
holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days. f A popular 

* Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758. 
+ Fuller's " Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most curious 
books of this class is Heylin's " History of the Sabbath," a work abounding 
with uncommon researches : it was written in favour of Charles's declara- 



The Sabbatarian Controversy. 429 

preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a 
cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred 
day should not pass like any other, moderated between the 
parties. He declared it was to be observed with strictness 
only by " persons of quality."* 

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the 
revival of this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that 
from the circumstance of our good-tempered monarch dis- 
covering the populace in Lancashire discontented, being- 
debarred from their rustic sports — and, exhorting them, out 
of his bonhomie and " fatherly love, which he owed to them 
all " (as he said), to recover their cheerful habits — he was 
innocently involving the country in divinity, and in civil war. 
James I. would have started with horror at the " Book of 
Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the arch- 
bishop, and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged 
to the block. What invisible threads suspend together the 
most remote events ! 

The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their 
battles, that the profanation of the day might be expiated by 
a field-sacrifice, and that the Sabbath- breakers should receive 
a signal punishment. The opinions of the nature of the 
Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite and 
novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. 

tion for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in th.e first edition of 
Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the Lady's speech, in 
Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since Cromwell's 
time that Sunday has been made in England a day of gravity and severity : 
and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of England little 
suspects that he is conforming to the Calvinism of an English Sunday.'''' 
It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads unfurnished with 
their own national history, for in the second edition Warton cancelled the 
note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted with the levities 
and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is usual on these points, 
vehemently threw themselves into an opposite direction ; but they perhaps 
advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day into a sullen and gloomy 
reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and Paley, in his "Moral 
and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken more enlightened 
views on this subject. 

* "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working, whilst 
their eyes are waking ; let such who all the foregoing week had their 
cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour, let 
such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them ; whilst 
persons of quality, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long — 
I mean, who rest from hard labour — are concerned in conscience to observe 
the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations." 



430 Character of James the First. 

James L; who knew nothing of such opinions, has been un- 
justly aspersed by those who live in more settled times, when 
such matters have been more wisely established than ever 
they were discussed.* 



MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR. 

The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusil- 
lanimity — as if personal was the same thing as political cou- 
rage, and as if a king placed himself in a field of battle by a 
proclamation for war. The idle tale that James trembled at 
the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an 
instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the 
womb from his mother's terror at the assassination of 
Bizzio, is probably not true, yet it serves the purpose of in- 
considerate writers to indicate his excessive pusillanimity ; 
but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which is 
certainly true : — In passing from Berwick into his new 
kingdom, the king, with his own hand, " shot out of a 
cannon so fay re and with so great judgment" as convinced 
the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great artillery," as 
Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I. was 
not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of 
consequence in his literary and political character. Several 
instances are recorded of his intrepidity. But the absurd 
charge of his pusillanimit} 7 " and his pedantry has been car- 
ried so far, as to suppose that it affected his character as a 
sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of 

* It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the performance 
of any of his proclamations ; and his facile disposition made him more tole- 
rant than appears in our history. At this very time, the conduct of a lord 
mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof of the city magis- 
trate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is here adduced as 
an evidence of the king's usual conduct : — 

The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasione 
a great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor 
commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning 
to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he 
thought there had been no more kings in England than himself ; and sent 
a warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pass, which he obeyed, observing — 
" While it was in my power, I did my duty ; but that being taken away 
by a higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord- 
mayor so highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and 
thanked him for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James 



Acknowledges his Dependence on the Commons, 431 

James I. : — "He was despised by all abroad as a pedant with- 
out true judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," 
however, had " the true judgment and steadiness" to obtain 
his favourite purpose, which was the preservation of a con- 
tinued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by 
foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not 
consume the blood and treasure of his people (and James had 
neither to spare), may be little regarded on the Continent; 
the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will look with contempt 
on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would scatter 
among his subjects ; bis presence with the foreigners is only 
felt in his armies ; and they seek to allure him to fight their 
battles, and to involve him in their interests. 

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer : 
he said, "No man gains by war but he that hath not 
wherewith to live in peace." But there was also a secret 
motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which he 
once thus confidentially opened : — 

" A king of England had no reason but to seek always to 
decline a war ; for though the sword was indeed in his hand, 
the purse was in the people's. One could not go without 
the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin the fray, 
what certainty could he have that he should not want suffi- 
cient to make an honourable end ? If he called for subsidies, 
and did not obtain, he must retreat ingloriously. He must 
beg an alms, with such conditions as would break the heart 
of majesty, through capitulations that some members ivould 
make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, 
by retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declama- 
tions, and thus he must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the 
danger of a mutiny."* 



JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. 
THEIR CONDUCT. 

Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary 
power, confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons ; 
and, on the whole, at a time when prerogative and privilege 
were alike indefinite and obscure, the king received from them 
hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed the in- 

* Hacket's " Life of Lord-Keeper Williams," p. 80. The whole is dis* 
tinguished by italics, as the king's own words. 



432 Character of James the First. 

dulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people ; and the sove- 
reign who was zealous to correct the abuses of his govern- 
ment, was not distinguished by the Commons from him who 
insolently would perpetuate them. 

When the Commons were not in good humour with Eliza- 
beth, or James, they contrived three methods of inactivity, 
running the time to waste — nihil agendo, or aliud agendo, or 
male agendo ; doing nothing, doing something else, or doing 
evilly.* In one of these irksome moments, waiting for sub- 
sidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the Speaker, " What 
had passed in the Lower House ?" He replied, " If it please 
your Majesty — seven weeks." On one of those occasions, 
when the queen broke into a passion when they urged her to 
a settlement of the succession, one of the deputies of the 
Commons informed her Majesty, that " the Commons would 
never speak about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever ; 
and that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had 
passed in parliament : which was, therefore, a great assembly 
rendered entirely useless, — and all were desirous of returning 
home."f 

But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured 
greater hardships : with the habit of studious men, the king 
had an utter carelessness of money and a generosity of 
temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the Lord-Keeper Wil- 
liams, has described. " The king was wont to give like a 
king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm 
with the covering of another." He seemed to have had no 
distinct notions of total amounts ; he was once so shocked at 
the sight of the money he had granted away, lying in heaps 
on a table, that he instantly reduced it to half the sum. It 
appears that Parliament never granted even the ordinary 
supplies they had given to his predecessors ; his chief revenue 
was drawn from the customs ; yet his debts, of which I find 
an account in the Parliamentary History, after a reign of 
twenty-one years, did not amount to 200,000^4 This mo- 
narch could not have been so wasteful of his revenues as it is 
presumed. James I. was always generous, and left scarcely 
any debts. He must have lived amidst many self-depriva- 
tions ; nor was this difficult to practise for this king, for he 

* I find this description in a MS. letter of the times, 
f From a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon, to 
Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession. 
X " Parliamentary History," vol. v. p. 147. 



Acknowledges his Dependence on the Commons. 433 

was a philosopher, indifferent to the common and imaginary 
wants of the vulgar of royalty. Whenever he threw him- 
self into the arms of his Parliament, they left him without a 
feeling of his distress. In one of his speeches he says — 

" In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts of 
my heart ; but I may say, with our Saviour, ' I have piped 
to you, and you have not danced ; I have mourned, and you 
have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen years, in which 
time you have had peace, and I have received far less supply 
than hath been given to any king since the Conquest." 

Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced on 
wretched expedients, selling patents for monopolies, craving 
benevolences, or free gifts, and such expedients ; the mono- 
polies had been usual in Elizabeth's reign ; yet all our his- 
torians agree, that his subjects were never grievously op- 
pressed by such occasional levies ; this was even the confes- 
sion of the contemporaries of this monarch. They were 
every day becoming wealthier by those acts of peace they 
despised the monarch for maintaining. " The kingdom, since 
his reign began, was luxuriant in gold and silver, far above 
the scant of our fathers who lived before us," are the words 
of a contemporary.* All nourished about the king, except 

the king: himself. James I. discovered how lisrht and hollow 

. . . . 

was his boasted "prerogative-royal," which, by its power of 

dissolving the Parliament, could only keep silent those who 

had already refused their aid. 

A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James by 

this ludicrous distich : 

Many faults complained of, few things amended, 
A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended. 

But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they addressed 
James I. by what the king called a " stinging petition ;" or, 
when the ministers, passing over in silence the motion of the 
Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads of a party replied, 
that to grant them were to put an end to Parliament. But 
they practised expedients and contrivances, which comported 
as little with the dignity of an English senate, as with the 
majesty of the sovereign. 

At a late hour, when not a third part of the house re- 
mained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness 
and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a pro- 

* Hacket's " Life of Lord- Keeper Williams." 



434 Character of James the First. 

test, — of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous 
matter, as the surreptitious means ; and it was then, that, 
with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.* In 
the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at 
their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by 
their invectives ; and they were menaced by two lawyers, 
with a " Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed 
to reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third 
part of his revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his 
customs. On this occasion I find that, publicly in the Ban- 
queting-house at Whitehall, the king tore all their bills before 
their faces ; and, as not a single act was passed, in the phrase 
of the day this was called an addle Parliament. f Such un- 
happy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the suc- 
ceeding reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once 
occurred in 1621, late in James's reign. The monopolies 
were then abolished. The king and the prince shed reci- 
procal tears in the house ; and the prince wept when he 
brought an affectionate message of thanks from the Com- 
mons. The letter- writer says, " It is a day worthy to be 
kept holiday ; some say it shall, but I believe them not." It 
never was ; for even this parliament broke up with the cries 
of " some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure 
and the impure democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his 
margin, that the king endeavoured to cajole the Commons. 
Had he known of the royal tears, he had still heightened the 
phrase. Hard fate of kings ! Should ever their tears attest 
the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of 
the pale of humanity : for Francis Osborne, that cynical re- 
publican, declares, that " there are as few abominable princes 
as tolerable kings ; because princes must court the public 
favour before they attain supreme power, and then change 
their nature !" Such is the egotism of republicanism ! 



SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES. 

The character of James I. has always been taken from certain 
scandalous chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is 
this mud which has darkened and disturbed the clear stream 
of history. The reigns of Elizabeth and James teemed with 

* " Rush worth," vol. i. p. 54. 
f From a MS. of the times. 



Scandalous Chronicles. 435 

libels in church and state from opposite parties : the idleness 
of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous brood of a 
less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the 
Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at 
once wrote treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the 
rope which could only silence Penry and his party ; but these 
only reached to scandalum magnatum, and the puny wretches 
could only have crept into a pillory. In the times of the 
Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which vilified 
our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurk- 
ing holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Proco- 
piuses ; a set of self-elected spies in the court ; gossipers, 
lounging in the same circle ; eaves-droppers ; pryers into 
corners ; buzzers of reports ; and punctual scribes of what 
the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term les 
on dit ; that is, things that might never have happened, 
although they are recorded : registered for posterity in many 
a scandalous chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories ; 
and include so many truths and falsehoods, that it becomes 
unsafe for the historian either to credit or to disbelieve them. # 

* Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in 
a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited 
neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter 
Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable epergne, 
and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic history ! Sir 
Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of King 
James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous chronicle 
from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar ones, 
especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he 
had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous 
services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500?. " The Five 
Years of King James," which passes under the name of Sir Fulk Greville, 
the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently 
referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's hash 
— for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's " History of James I.," 
who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier ; yet this writer 
never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged with 
having scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a misanthro- 
pical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever rottened a 
man's name. James was very negligent in dress ; graceful appearances did 
not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king was trussed on 
horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump of inanimate 
matter ; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his legs. Fur- 
ther, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to remain 
just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this unlucky 
king " in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a horn, in- 
stead of a sword, by his side ; how suitable to his age, calling, or person, 

r r 2 



436 Character of James the First. 

Such was the race generated in this court of peace and 
indolence ! And Hacket, in his " Life of the Lord-Keeper 
Williams," without disguising the fact, tells us that the Lord- 
Keeper " spared not for cost to purchase the most certain 
intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of every hour's occur- 
rences at court ; and was wont to say that no man could be 
a statesman without a great deal of money." 

We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch 
of the same family. When news-books, as the first news- 
papers were called, did not yet exist to appease the hungering 
curiosity of the country, a voluminous correspondence was 
carried on between residents in the metropolis and their 
country friends : these letters chiefly remain in their MS. 
state * Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent 
this way, and sometimes a confidential friend, to convey to 
them the secret history of the times ; and, on the whole, they 
are composed by a better sort of writers ; for, as they had no 
other design than to inform their friends of the true state of 
passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent 
accounts the lies of the day they sometimes sent down. 
They have preserved some fugitive events useful in historical 
researches, but their pens are garrulous ; and it requires some 
experience to discover the character of the writers, to be 
enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements. Little 
things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists ; 
much time was spent in learning of those at court, who had 
quarrelled, or were on the point ; who were seen to have bit 

I leave others to judge from his pictures :" and this he bitterly calls 
"leaving him dressed for posterity !" This is the style which passes for 
history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting," which was 
James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a sedentary scholar, 
"is the cheapest a king can indulge ;" and, indeed, the empty coffers of this 
monarch afforded no other. 

These pseudo- histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as " monstrous 
satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and coun- 
try," when, in the wantonness of the times, " every little miscarriage, ex- 
uberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller 
has designated these suspicious scribes as " a generation of the people who, 
like moths, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even 
like fleas, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber ; and, to 
enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of all things 
which were, or were not, ever done or thought of." — Church History, 
book x. p. 87. 

* Mr. Lodge's " Illustrations of British History" is an eminent and ele- 
gant work of the minutice historical ; as are the more recent volumes of Sir 
Henry Ellis's valuable collections. 



A Picture of the Age from a Manuscript. 437 

their lips, and looked downcast ; who was budding, and whose 
full-blown flower was drooping : then we have the sudden 
reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of 
the pourquoi of the pourquoi* 

Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, 
where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or 
corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless 
scene of expedients and of compromises. 



A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE TIME. 

A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in that 
age, engendered the extremes of luxury and want. Money 
traders practised the art of decoying the gallant youths of the 
day into their nets, and transforming, in a certain time, the 
estates of the country gentlemen into skins of parchment, 

The wax continuing hard, the acres melting. 

Massinger. 



* Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness of the 
times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin Stuteville, 
chronicles a fracas : — "I am told of a great falling out between my Lord 
Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to pedlar's blood, 
and traitors blood. It was about some money which my Lord Digby 
should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for the charge 
of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a fashion for half 
the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not peddle so well as 
his lordship. " 

A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same kind of 
intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can describe a 
quarrel before it takes place. 

"You know the primum mobile of our court (Buckingham), by whose 
motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still : the bright sun 
of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the 
court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none 
so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now 
to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord of Pembroke and my Lord 
of Rochester are so far out, as it is almost come to a quarrel ; I know not 
how true this is, but Sir Thomas Overbury and my Lord of Pembroke have 
been long jarring, and therefore the other is likely." 

Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the 
writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and concluding 
earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to the flames. A 
wish which appears to have been rarely complied with ; and this may serve 
as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they regard their own 
peace ; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters are rather preserved 
with peculiar care. 



438 Character of James the First. 

Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents for 
licensing all the inns and alehouses — for being the sole ven- 
dors of manufactured articles, such as gold lace, tobacco-pipes, 
starch, soap, &c, were grinding and cheating the people to an 
extent which was not at first understood, although the prac- 
tice had existed in the former reign. The gentry, whose 
family pride would vie with these nouveaux riches, exhausted 
themselves in rival profusion ; all crowded to " upstart Lon- 
don," deserting their country mansions, which were now left 
to the care of " a poor alms-woman, or a bed- rid beadsman." 

In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hos- 
pitality for the metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family 
establishments, crowded London with new and distinct races 
of idlers, or, as they would now be called, unproductive mem- 
bers of society. Erom a contemporary manuscript, one of 
those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it 
was probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw 
some extracts, as a forcible picture of the manners of the age.* 
Masters of ancient families, to maintain a mere exterior of 
magnificence in dress and equipage in the metropolis, were 
really at the same time hiding themselves in penury : they 
thrust themselves into lodgings, and " five or six knights, or 
justices of peace," with all their retinue, became the inmates 
of a shopkeeper ; yet these gentlemen had once " kept the 
rusty chimneys of two or three houses smoking, and had 
been the feeders of twenty or forty serving-men : a single 
page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now. 

" Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and an 
emperor in the streets ; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so 
they may be hurried in a coach ; giving that allowance to 
horses and mares that formerly maintained houses full of men ; 
pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and burying all 
the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens' coffers. 

" There are now," the writer adds, " twenty thousand mas- 
terless men turned off, who know not this night where to 
lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and ready to undertake any 
desperate course." 

Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous race of 
idlers, in 

* The MS. is entitled " Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie touching the 
Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King James." — 
Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks of the king 
with the highest respect. 



A Picture of the Age from a Manuscript. 439 

"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, who, 
nursed up in fulness, pampered in their minority, and left in 
charge to their elder brothers, who were to be fathers to them, 
followed them in despair to London, where these untimely-born 
youths are left so bare, that their whole life's allowance was 
consumed in one year." 

The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited picture of 
manners in this long period of peace. 

" The gentry are like owls, all feathers and no flesh ; all 
show, and no substance ; all fashion, and no feeding ; and fit 
for no service but masks and May-games. The citizens have 
dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with ; they 
have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets 
for gold and silver;* pins and peacock feathers for lands 
and tenements ; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses 
for goodly castles and ancient mansions ; their woods are 
turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces ; and their goods 
and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your 
Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds 
that peck at painted fruits ; all outside." The writer then 
describes the affected penurious habits of the grave citizens, 
w T ho were then preying on the country gentlemen : — " When 
those big swoln leeches, that have thus sucked them, wear 
rags, eat roots, speak like jugglers that have reeds in their 
mouths ; look like spittle-men, especially when your Majesty 

* Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell bad the monopolies of 
gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state ; and not only cheated the 
people, hut, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made of it are said to 
have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he 
expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person 
connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment. The brother 
of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles 
Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled 
to fly the country. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different 
from kings' speeches in parliament : he speaks as indignantly as any indi- 
vidual who was personally aggrieved : " Three patents at this time have 
been complained of, and thought great grievances ; my purpose is to strike 
them all dead, and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done presently. 
Had these things been complained of to me, before the parliament, I could 
have done the office of a just king, and have punished tbem ; peradventure 
more than now ye intend to do. No private person whatsoever, were he 
ever so dear unto me, shall be respected by me by many degrees as the 
public good ; and I hope, my lords, that ye will do me that right to publish 
to my people this my heart purposes. Proceed judicially ; spare none, 
where ye find just cause to punish : but remember that laws have not their 
eyes in their necks, but in their foreheads." — Eushworth, vol. i. p. 26. 



440 Character of James the First. 

hath occasion to use them ; their fat lies in their hearts, their 
substance is buried in their bowels, and he that will have it 
must first take their lives. Their study is to get, and their 
chiefest care to conceal ; and most from yourself, gracious 
sir ; not a commodity comes from their hand, but you pay a 
noble in the pound for booking, which they call forbearing * 
They think it lost time if they double not their principal in 
two years. They have attractive powders to draw these Hies 
into their claws ; they will entice men with honey into their 
hives, and with wax entangle them ;f they pack the cards, 
and their confederates, the lords, deal, by which means no 
other men have ever good game. They have in a few years 
laid up riches for many, and yet can never be content to say 
— Soul, take thy rest, or hand receive no more ; do no more 
wrong : but still they labour to join house to house, and 
land to land. What want they of being kings, but the name ? 
Look into the shires and counties, where, with their purchased 
lordships and manors, one of their private letters has equal 
power with your Majesty's privy seal. J It is better to be 

* The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers, who 
could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exorbitant 
charge ; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the popular 
grievances brought into Parliament — it is there called, ' ' A bill against 
Double Payments of Book Debts." One of the country members, who 
made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, " Pay the reckoning 
overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morning." 

f In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth 400,000?., 
an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients and contri- 
vances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders and care- 
less heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He generally contrived to make 
the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers pay for 
the goose." He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly compared his 
bonds ' ' to infants, which battle best by sleeping ;" to battle, is to be 
nourished — a term still retained in the battle-book of the university. I 
have elsewhere preserved the character and habits of the money-dealer in 
the age of James I. — See " Curiosities of Literature," 11th Edit. p. 228. 

X It is observed, in the same life, that his mortgages, and statutes, and his 
judgments were so numerous, that his papers would have made a good map of 
England. A view of the chamber of this usurer is preserved by Massinger, 
who can only be understood by the modern reader in Mr. Grifford's edition : — 

Here lay 

A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment ; 

Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town, 

If not redeem'd this day, which is not in 

The unthrift's purse ; there being scarce one shire 

In Wales or England, where my monies are not 

Lent out at usury, the certain hook 

To draw in more. Massinger's City Madam. 



Anecdotes of the Manners of the Age. 441 

one of their hinds, than your Majesty's gentleman usher ; 
one of their grooms, than your guards. What care they, if 
it he called tribute or no, so long as it comes in termly : or 
whether their chamber be called Exchequer, or the dens of 
cheaters, so that the money be left there." 

This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity ; for 
although in the present extraordinary age of calculations and 
artificial wealth, we can suffer " a dunghill-breed of men," 
like Mompesson and his contemptible partner of this reign, 
to accumulate in a rapid period more than a ducal fortune, 
without any apparent injury to the public welfare, the result 
was different then ; the legitimate and enlarged principles 
of commerce were not practised by our citizens in the first 
era of their prosperity ; their absorbing avarice rapidly took 
in all the exhausting prodigality of the gentry, who were 
pushed back on the people to prey in their turn on them ; 
those who found their own acres disappearing, became en- 
closers of commons ; this is one of the grievances which 
Massinger notices, while the writer of the " Five Years of 
King James" tells us that these discontents between the 
gentry and the commonalty grew out into a petty rebellion ; 
and it appears by Peyton that " divers of the people were 
hanged up." 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 

The minute picture of the domestic manners of this age ex- 
hibits the results of those extremes of prodigality and avarice 
which struck observers in that contracted circle which then 
constituted society. The king's prodigal dispensations of 
honours and titles seem at first to have been political ; for 
James was a foreigner, and designed to create a nobility, as 
likewise an inferior order, who might feel a personal attach- 
ment for the new monarch ; but the facility by which titles 
were acquired, was one cause which occasioned so many to 
crowd to the metropolis to enjoy their airy honour by a 
substantial ruin ; knighthood had become so common, that 
some of the most infamous and criminal characters of this 
age we find in that rank.* The young females, driven to 

* A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on ' ' The 
inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to Titles, since 
King James came to the crown." Sir Edward appears not to disapprove 
of these promotions during the first ten years of his reign, hut "when 



442 Character of James the First. 

necessity by the fashionable ostentation of their parents, 
were brought to the metropolis as to a market; "where," 
says a contemporary, " they obtained pensions, or sometimes 
marriages, by their beauty." When Gondomar, the Spanish 
ambassador, passed to his house, the ladies were at their bal- 
conies on the watch, to make themselves known to him ; and 
it appears that every one of those ladies had sold their favours 
at a dear rate. Among these are some, " who pretending to 
be wits, as they called them," says Arthur Wilson,* " or 
had handsome nieces or daughters, drew a great resort to 
their houses." And it appears that Gondomar, to prevent 
these conversaziones from too freely touching on Spanish 
politics, sweetened their silence by his presents. f The same 
grossness of manners was among the higher females of the 
age ; when we see that grave statesman, Sir Dudley Carleton, 
narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and all " the 
petty sorceries," the romping of the " great ladies, who were 
made shorter by the skirts," we discover their coarse tastes ; 
but when we find the king going to the bed of the bride in 
his nightgown, to give a reveille-matin, and remaining a good 
time in or upon the bed, " Choose which you will believe ;" 
this bride was not more decent than the ladies who publicly, 
on their balconies, were soliciting the personal notice of 
Gondomar. 

This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in the 
nation, as it had in the court of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, 
could not but influence the familiar style of their humour 
and conversation. James I., in the Edict on Duels, employs 

alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a shop, persons of private 
estates, and of families whose fathers would have thought themselves 
highly honoured to have been but knights in Queen Elizabeth's time, were 
advanced, then the fruits began to appear. The greater nobility were 
undervalued ; the ancient baronage saw inferior families take precedency 
over them ; nobility lost its respect, and a parity in conversation was in- 
troduced which in English dispositions begot contempt ; the king could not 
employ them all ; some grew envious, some factious, some in grateful, how- 
ever obliged, by being once denied." — P. 302. 

* One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of " wits" was 
then introduced, in the sense we now use it. 

+ Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the lady wits. 
When Grondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob's house, 
she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but in return she 
only opened her mouth, gaping on him. This was again repeated the fol- 
lowing day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of her incivility. She 
replied, that he had purchased some favours of the ladies at a dear rate, 
and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as others. 



Anecdotes of the Manners of the Age. 443 

the expression of our dearest bedfellow to designate the 
queen ; and there was no indelicacy attached to this singular 
expression. Much of that silly and obscene correspondence 
of James with Buckingham, while it adds one more morti- 
fying instance of " the follies of the wise," must be attributed 
to this cause.* Are not most of the dramatic works of that 
day frequently unreadable from this circumstance ? As an 
historian, it would be my duty to show how incredibly gross 
were the domestic language and the domestic familiarities of 
kings, queens, lords, and ladies, which were much like the 
lowest of our populace. We may felicitate ourselves on 
having escaped the grossness, without, however, extending 
too far these self-congratulations. 

The men were dissolved in all the indolence of life and its 
wantonness ; they prided themselves in traducing their own 
innocence rather than suffer a lady's name to pass un- 
blemished, f The marriage-tie lost its sacredness amid these 
disorders of social life. The luxurious idlers of that day were 
polluted with infamous vices ; and Drayton, in the " Moon- 
calf," has elaborately drawn full-length pictures of the lady 
and the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have 
required the darkening tints of satire to be hideous — in one 
line the Muse describes " the most prodigious birth" — 

He's too much woman and She's too much man. 

The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly sprung 
up in this reign, and exhibited new names and new things. 

* Our wonder and surmises have been often raised at the strange sub- 
scriptions of Buckingham to the king, — "Your dog," and James as in- 
genuously calling him " dog Steenie." But this was not peculiar to 
Buckingham ; James also called the grave Cecil his "little beagle." The 
Earl of "Worcester, writing to Cecil, who had succeeded in his search after 
one Bywater, the earl says, " If the king's beagle can hunt by land as well 
as he hath done by water, we will leave capping of Joivler, and cap the 
beagle." The queen, writing to Buckingham to intercede with the king for 
B awl eigh's life, addresses Buckingham by " My kind Dog." James ap- 
pears to have been always playing on some whimsical appellative by 
which he characterised his ministers and favourites, analogous to the notions 
of a huntsman. Many of our writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, have 
strangely misconceived these playful appellatives, unconscious of the origin 
of this familiar humour. The age was used to the coarseness. We did not 
then excel all Europe, as Addison set the model, in the delicacy of humour ; 
indeed, even so late as Congreve's time, they were discussing its essential 
distinction from wit. 

t The expression of one of these gallants, as preserved by "Wilson, can- 
not be decently given, but is more expressive, p. 147. 



444 Character of James the First. 

Now silk and gold-lace shops first adorned Cheapside, which 
the continuator of Stowe calls "the beauty of London ;" the 
extraordinary rise in price of these fashionable articles forms 
a curious contrast with those of the preceding reign. Scarfs, 
in Elizabeth's time, of thirty shillings value, were now wrought 
up to as many pounds ; and embroidered waistcoats, which in 
the queen's reign no workman knew how to make worth five 
pounds, were now so rich and curious as to be cheapened at 
forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in shoe-buckles, por- 
tentously closing in shoe-roses, which were puffed knots of 
silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even by men of mean 
rank, at the cost of more than five pounds, who formerly had 
worn gilt copper shoe-buckles. 

In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, many 
consumed three or four hundred pounds a year. James, who 
perceived the inconveniences of this sudden luxury in the 
nation, tried to discountenance it, although the purpose went 
to diminish his own scanty revenue. Nor was this attack on 
the abuse of tobacco peculiar to his majesty, although he has 
been so ridiculed for it ; a contemporary publication has well 
described the mania and its consequences : " The smoak of 
fashion hath quite blown away the smoak of hospitalitie, and 
turned the chimneys of their forefathers into the noses of 
their children."* The king also reprobated the finical embar- 
rassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new clothes. 
When they brought him a Spanish hat, he flung it away with 
scorn, swearing he never loved them nor their fashions ; and 
when they put roses on his shoes, he swore too, " that they 
should not make him a ruffe-footed dove ; a yard of penny 
ribbon would serve that turn." 

The sudden wealth which seems to have rushed into the 
nation in this reign of peace, appeared in massy plate and 
jewels, and in " prodigal marriage-portions, which were grown 
in fashion among the nobility and gentry, as if the skies had 
rained plenty." Such are the words of Hacket, in his 
"Memorial of the Lord-Keeper Williams." Enormous wealth 
was often accumulated. An usurer died worth 400,000/. ; 
Sir Thomas Compton, a citizen, left, it is said, 800,000Z., and 
his heir was so overcome with this sudden irruption of wealth, 
that he lost his senses ; and Cranfield, a citizen, became the 
Earl of Middlesex. 

* The "Peace-Maker," 1618, 



Anecdotes of the Manners of the Age. 445 

The continued peace, which produced this rage for dress, 
equipage, and magnificence, appeared in all forms of riot and 
excess ; corruption bred corruption. The industry of the 
nation was not the commerce of the many, but the arts of 
money -traders, confined to the suckers of the state ; and the 
unemployed and dissipated, who were every day increasing 
the population in the capital, were a daring petulant race, 
described by a contemporary as " persons of great expense, 
who, having run- themselves into debt, were constrained to 
run into faction ; and defend themselves from the danger of 
the law."* These appear to have enlisted under some show 
of privilege among the nobility ; and the metropolis was often 
shaken by parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Brava- 
does, Roysters, and Bonaventures.f Such were some of 
the turbulent children of peace, whose fiery spirits, could 
they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers of 
fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed often by 
their own relatives ; and wards ruined by their own guar- 
dians ;% all these were clamorous for bold piracies on the 
Spaniards : a visionary island, and a secret mine, would often 
disturb the dreams of these unemployed youths, with whom 
it was no uncommon practice to take a purse on the road. 
Such felt that— 



in this plenty 



And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were train' d 

To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd 

Rot in the harhour. Massinger. 

The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in fiery 
spirits pent up together ; and the loiterers in the environs 
of a court, surfeiting with peace, were quick at quarrel. It 
is remarkable, that in the pacific reign of James I. never was 
so much blood shed in brawls, nor duels so tremendously 
barbarous. Hume observed this circumstance, and attributes 
it to " the turn that the romantic chivalry, for which the 
nation was formerly so renowned, had lately taken." An 
inference probably drawn from the extraordinary duel between 
Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Lord Dorset, and the Lord 

* " Five Years of King James." Harl. Misc. 
f A. Wilson's "Hist, of James I." p. 28. 
X That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of Wards then existed 
and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in this reign, 
has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas. 



446 Character of James the First. 

Bruce.* These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, 
yet could resolve not to part without destroying each other ; 
the narrative so wonderfully composed by Sackville, still 
makes us shudder at each blow received and given. Books 
were published to instruct them by a system of quarrelling, 
"to teach young gentlemen when they are beforehand and 
when behindhand;" thus they incensed and incited those 
youths of hope and promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge 
on duelling, calls, in the language of the poet, Aurorce Jilii, 
the sons of the morning, — who often were drowned in their 
own blood ! But, on a nearer inspection, when we discover 
the personal malignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness 
of their manners, and the choice of weapons and places in 
their mode of butchering each other, we must confess that 
they rarely partake of the spirit of chivalr} r . One gentleman 
biting the ear of a Templar, or switching a poltroon lord ; 
another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit ; or to strip 
to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, 
which could only have fermented in the disorders of the 
times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made 
them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his 
Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many 
proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same 
dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration, 
embellish the state-papers ;f and to remedy it, James, who 

* It may be foundi n the popular pages of the "Gruardian ;" there first 
printed from a MS. in the library of the Haileys. 

■f "A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure against 
private combats and combatants, &c." 1613. It is a volume of about 150 
pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two passages : — 

' ' The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of magis- 
trates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred ouer all 
this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a constant 
beleefe among many that desire to be reputed among the wisest, of a cer- 
tain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as their birth-right to 
defend their reputations with their swords, and to take reuenge of any 
wrong either offered or apprehended, in that measure which their owne 
inward passion or affection doth suggest, without any further proofe ; so as 
the challenge be sent in a civil manner, though without leave demanded of 
the sovereign," &c. 

The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling — to 
turn this hawk into a singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. "By com- 
paring forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will not be hard to 
judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious presumption, in dealing 
blowes so confidently, will mount, if it bee once let flie, from the breast 
wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth justice both to keep her still 



Anecdotes of the Manners of the Age. 447 

rarely consented to shed blood, condemned an irascible lord to 
suffer the ignominy of the gallows. 

But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among the 
monied men, and a hollow magnificence among the gentry, 
bribery had tainted even the lords. All were hurrying on in 
a stream of venality, dissipation, and want ; and the nation, 
amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of peace, 
was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and 
turbulence. 

From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, 
Cabinet transmitted to Cabinet the caution to preserve the 
kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. A poli- 
tical hypochondriacism : they imagined the head was becom- 
ing too large for the body, drawing to itself all the moisture 
of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against 
the erection of new buildings was passed by Elizabeth ; and 
from James to his successors proclamations were continually 
issued to forbid any growth of the city. This singular pro- 
hibition may have originated in their dread of infection from 
the plague, but it certainly became the policy of a weak and 
timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of the 
metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated 
as " masterless men, 1 ' — sedition was as contagious as the 
plague among the many. But proclamations were not 
listened to nor read ; houses were continually built, for they 
were in demand, — and the esquires, with their wives and 
daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, 
a marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were 
driven to the desperate " Order in Council " to pull down all 
new houses within ten miles of the metropolis — and further, 
to direct the Attorney-General to indict all those sojourners 
in town who had country houses, and mulct them in ruinous 
fines. The rural gentry were " to abide in their own counties, 
and by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and 
relieve the meaner people according to the ancient usage of 
the English nation'" 1 The Attorney- General, like all great 
lawyers, looking through the spectacles of his books, was 
short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new effects 

n her own close cage, with care that she learn neuer any other dittie then 
Est bene ; but withall, that for preuention of the worst that may fall out, 
wee clippe her wings, that they grow not too fast. For according to that 
of the proverb, It is labour lost to lay nets before the eyes of winged fowles," 
&c. p. 13. 



448 Character of James the First, 



which were passing around. The wisest laws are but foolish 
when Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them. The 
popular sympathy was, however, with the Attorney-General 
for it was imagined that the country was utterly ruined and 
depopulated by the town. 

And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists 
chorused ! for in the country the ancient hospitality was not 
kept up ; the crowd of retainers had vanished, the rusty 
chimneys of the mansion-house hardly smoked through a 
Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly pros- 
perous ; masses of treasure were melted down into every 
object of magnificence. " And is not this wealth drawn from 
our acres ?" was the outcry of the rural censor. Yet it was 
clear that the country in no way was impoverished, for the 
land rose in price ; and if manors sometimes changed their 
lords, they suffered no depreciation. A sudden wealth was 
diffused in the nation ; the arts of commerce were first ad- 
vancing ; the first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, 
was then named the " Trade's Increase." The town, with its 
multiplied demands, opened a perpetual market for the coun- 
try. The money-traders were breeding their hoards as the 
graziers their flocks ; and while the goldsmiths' shops blazed 
in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the 
soil. The innumerable books on agriculture published during 
these twenty years of peace is an evidence of the improvement 
of the country — sustained by the growing capitals of the men 
in trade. In this progress of domestic conveniency to metro- 
politan luxury, there was a transition of manners ; new objects 
and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient 
state. 

The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth ; 
and, as fast as they sprung, the Father of his people encoun- 
tered them by his proclamations, which, during long intervals 
of parliamentary recess, were to be enforced as laws : but they 
passed away as morning dreams over a happy, but a thought- 
less and wanton people. 



id 



449 



JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISORDERS AND 

DISCONTENTS OF A PEACE OF MORE THAN 

TWENTY YEARS. 

The king was himself amazed at the disorders and discontents 
he at length discovered ; and, in one of his later speeches, has 
expressed a mournful disappointment : 

" And now, I confess, that when I looked before upon the 
face of the government, I thought, as every man ivould have 
done, that the people were never so happy as in my time ; hut 
even, as at divers times I have looked upon many of my cop- 
pices, riding about them, and they appeared, on the outside, 
very thick and well-grown unto me, but, when I turned into 
the midst of them, I found them all bitten within, and full of 
plains and bare spots ; like the apple or pear, fair and smooth 
without, but when you cleave it asunder, you find it rotten at 
heart. Even so this kingdom, the external government being 
as good as ever it was, and I am sure as learned judges as 
ever it had, and I hope as honest administering justice within 
it ; and for peace, both at home and abroad, more settled, and 
longer lasting, than ever any before ; together with as great 
plenty as ever : so as it may be thought, every man might 
sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree," &c. &c* 

But while we see this king of peace surrounded by national 
grievances, and that "this fair coppice was very thick and 
well-grown," yet loud in murmurs, to what cause are we to 
attribute them ? Shall we exclaim with Catharine Macaulay 
against "the despotism of James," and "the intoxication of 
his power ?" — a monarch who did not even enforce the pro- 
clamations or edicts his wisdom dictated ;f and, as Hume has 
observed, while vaunting his prerogative, had not a single 
regiment of guards to maintain it. Must we agree with 
Hume, and reproach the king with his indolence and love of 
amusement — "particularly of hunting?" J 

* Rush worth, vol. i. p. 29 ; sub anno 1621. 

+ James I. said, " I will never offer to bring a new custom upon my 
people without the people's consent ; like a good physician, tell them what 
is amiss, if they will not concur to amend it, yet I have discharged my 
part." Among the difficulties of this king was that of being a foreigner, 
and amidst the contending factions of that day the "British Solomon" 
seems to have been unjustly reproached for his Scottish partialities. 

X La Boderie, the French Ambassador, complains of the king's frequent 
absences ; but James did not wish too close an intercourse with one who 

G G 



450 Character of James the First. 



THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OCCASIONAL 
RETIREMENTS. 

The king's occasional retirements to Koyston and Newmarket 
have even been surmised to have borne some analogy to the 
horrid Caprsea of Tiberius ; but a witness has accidentally 
detailed the king's uniform life in these occasional seclusions. 
James I. withdrew at times from public life, but not from 
public affairs ; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate 
days, was the cheap amusement and requisite exercise of his 
sedentary habits : but the chase only occupied a few hours. 
A part of the day was spent by the king in his private 
studies ; another at his dinners, where he had a reader, and 
was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of reference: 
state affairs were transacted at night ; for it was observed, at 
the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those 
occasional retirements, than when they were at London.* I 
have noticed, that the state papers were composed by him- 
self; that he wrote letters on important occasions without 
consulting any one ; and that he derived little aid from his 
secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the 
uniform life and sedentary habits of literary men usually 
incur this reproach from those real idlers who bustle in a life 
of nothingness. While no one loved more the still-life of 
peace than this studious monarch, whose habits formed an 
agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active 
life, study and business — no king more zealously tried to keep 
down the growing abuses of his government, by personally 
concerning himself in the protection of the subject.f 

was making a French party about Prince Henry, and whose sole object was 
to provoke a Spanish war : the king foiled the French intriguer ; but has 
incurred his contempt for being " timid and irresolute." James's cautious 
neutrality was no merit in the Frenchman's eye. 

La Boderie resided at our court from 1606tol611, and his "Ambassades," 
in 5 vols., are interesting in English history. The most satirical accounts of 
the domestic life of James, especially in his unguarded hours of boisterous 
merriment, are found in the coirespondence of the French ambassadors. 
They studied to flavour their dish, made of spy and gossip, to the taste of 
their master. Henry IV. never forgave James for his adherence to Spain 
and peace, instead of France and warlike designs. 

* Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27. 

t As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note some 
extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries. — Of the king's inter- 
ference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir Dudley 



451 



DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE DECRIERS OF 
JAMES THE FIRST. 

Let us detect, among the modern decriers of the character 
of James I., those contradictory opinions, which start out in 
the same page ; for the conviction of truth flashed on the 
eyes of those who systematically vilified him, and must often 
have pained them; while it embarrassedand confused those, who, 
being of no party, yet had adopted the popular notions. Even 
Hume is atv ariance with himself; for he censures James for his 
indolence, " which prevented him making any progress in the 
practice of foreign politics, and diminished that regard which 
all the neighbouring nations had paid to England during the 
reign of his predecessor," p. 29. Yet this philosopher 
observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince 
Henry, at p. 63, that " had he lived, he had probably pro- 
moted the glory, perhaps not the felicity, of his people. The 
unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, &c, 
engages them into such pursuits as destroy their own peace, 
and that of the rest of mankind." This is true philosophy, 
however politicians may comment, and however the military 
may command the state. Had Hume, with all the sweetness 
of his temper, been a philosopher on the throne, himself had 
probably incurred the censure he passed on James I. Another 
important contradiction in Hume deserves detection. The 

Carleton gives this account : — " The king played the best part in collecting 
arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much endeavour to 
draw water to their several mills ; ^nd advised them to take moderate 
courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected than 
their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty, to look 
himself into certain disorders of government there ; he told the lawyers 
'he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks and sub- 
tilities, with which the subject had been too long abused.'" — MS. Letter 
of Sir Dudley Carleton. 

In " Win wood's Memorials of State" there is a letter from Lord North- 
ampton, who was present at one of these strict examinations of the king ; 
and his language is warm with admiration : the letter being a private one, 
can hardly be suspected of court flattery. " His Majesty hath in person, 
with the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argument that mine ears 
ever heard, compounded between the parties of the civil and ecclesiastical 
courts, who begin to comply, by the king's sweet temper, on points that 
were held to be incompatible." — Winwood's Mem. iii. p. 54. 

In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having re- 
ceived injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had satisfaction 
made to the wronged, immediately. 

6G2 



452 Character of James the First. 

king, it seems, "boasted of his management of Ireland as 
his masterpiece." According to the accounts of Sir John 
Davies, whose political works are still read, and whom Hume 
quotes, James I. "in the space of nine years made greater 
advances towards the reformation of that kingdom than had 
been effected in more than four centuries ;" on this Hume 
adds that the king's "vanity in this particular was not with- 
out foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a 
sovereign, the art of humanising his ruder subjects by coloni- 
sation, so unfortunate is James, that even his most skilful 
apologist, influenced by popular prepossessions, employs a 
degrading epithet — and yet he, who had indulged a sarcasm 
on the vanity of James, in closing his general view of his wise 
administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler 
feelings. — " Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, " by 
which James introduced humanity and justice among a people 
who had ever been buried in the most profound barbarism. 
Noble cares ! much superior to the vain and criminal glory of 
conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the 
First been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought 
and a victory to be celebrated, popular historians, the panders 
of ambition, had adorned their pages with bloody trophies ; 
but the peace the monarch cultivated ; the wisdom which 
dictated the plan of civilisation ; and the persevering arts 
which put it into practice — these are the still virtues which 
give no motion to the spectacle of the historian, and are even 
forgotten in his pages. 

What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in 
summing up the character of James the First. The king has 
even extorted from her a confession, that " his conduct in 
Scotland was unexceptionable," but " despicable in his 
Britannic government." To account for this seeming change 
in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the 
same, required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he 
affected " a sententious wit ;" but she adds, that it consisted 
"only of quaint and stale conceits." We need not take the 
word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have so much of this " sen- 
tentious wit " recorded, of which probably she knew little. 
Forced to confess that James's education had been " a more 
learned one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how 
useless it is to educate princes at all ; for this " more learned 
education " made this prince " more than commonly deficient 
in all the points he pretended to have any knowledge of." 



Discrepancies among the Decriers of James L 453 

This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince, 
having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled 
the popular accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the 
littleness of soul," of this abused monarch, surprises one in 
the same page by discovering enough good qualities to make 
something 1 more than a tolerable kino-. " His reign, though 
ignoble to himself, was happy to his people, who were en- 
riched by commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they 
made considerable progress in their liberties." So that, 
on the whole, the nation appears not to have had all the 
reason they have so fully exercised in deriding and vilifying a 
sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of 
making himself contemptible ! I shall notice another writer, 
of an amiable character, as an evidence of the influence of 
popular prejudice, and the effect of truth. 

When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he 
passed part of his time among the learned ; but such was his 
habitual attention in studying the duties of the sovereign, 
that he closely attended the Danish courts of justice ; and 
Daines Barrington, in his curious " Observations on the Sta- 
tutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish 
code three statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so 
provocative of sarcasm is the ill-used name of this monarch, 
that our author could not but shrewdly observe, that James 
" spent more time in those courts than in attending upon his 
destined consort." Yet this is not true : the king was jovial 
there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. 
Osborne even censures James for once giving marks of his 
uxoriousness !* But while Daines Barrington degrades, by 
unmerited ridicule, the honourable employment of the " Bri- 
tish Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the truth 
that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect ad- 
miration of James the First, whose statutes he declares 
" deserve much to be enforced ; nor do I find any one which 
hath the least tendency to extend the prerogative, or abridge 
the liberties and rights of his subjects." He who came to 
scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the 
laws of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to 
the truth : the step was a bold one ! He says, " It is at 
present a sort of fashion to suppose that this king, because 
he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or merit." Had 

* See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. ZZi, 



454 Character of James the First. 

Dairies Barrington been asked for proofs of trie pedantry of 
James the First, he had been still more perplexed ; but what 
can be more convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the 
character of James the First, being struck, as he tells us, by 
" his desire of being instructed in the English law, and 
holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the most 
eminent lawyers, — as Sir Edward Coke, and others !" Such 
was the monarch whose character was perpetually reproached 
for indolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power ! Even 
Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, quotes 
and admires James's prescient decision on the character of 
Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and 
Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.* 

But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional 
prejudices, and often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with 
no voice of its own, to learn what the unprejudiced contem- 
poraries of James I. thought of the cause of the disorders of 
their age. They were alike struck by the wisdom and the 
zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this 
long reign of peace. At first, says the continuator of Stowe, 
all ranks but those " who were settled in piracy," as he de- 
signates the cormorants of war, and curiously enumerates 
their classes, " were right joyful of the peace ; but, in a few 
years afterwards, all the benefits were generally forgotten, 
and the happiness of the general peace of the most part con- 
temned." The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected 
result by the natural reflection — " Such is the world's cor- 
ruption, and man's vile ingratitude. "f My philosophy 
enables me to advance but little beyond. A learned contem- 
porary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his manuscript diary, notices 
the death of the monarch, whom he calls " our learned and 
peaceable sovereign." — "It did not a little amaze me to see 
all men generally slight and disregard the loss of so mild and 
gentle a prince, which made me even to feel, that the ensuing 
times might yet render his loss more sensible, and his memory 
more dear unto posterity." Sir Symond censures the king 
for not engaging in the German war to support the Pals- 
grave, and maintain " the true church of Grod ;" but deeper 
politicians have applauded the king for avoiding a war, in 
which he could not essentially have served the interests of 
the rash prince who had assumed the title of King of Bohe- 

* Brodie's " History of British. Empire," vol. ii. p. 244, 411. 
f Stowe' s Annals, p. 845. 



Summary of his Character. 455 

mia.* "Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his 
virtues and his learning, his augmenting the liberties of the 
English, rather than his oppressing them by any unlimited or 
illegal taxes and corrosions, his death deserved more sorrow 
and condolement from his subjects than it found. "t 

Another contemporary author, Wilson, has not ill-traced 
the generations of this continued peace — " peace begot plenty, 
plenty begot ease and wantonness, and ease and wantonness 
begot poetry, and poetry swelled out into that bulk in this 
king's time which begot monstrous satyrs." Such were the las- 
eivious times, which dissolving the ranks of society in a general 
corruption, created on one part the imaginary and unlimited 
wants of prosperity ; and on the other produced the riotous 
children of indolence, and the turbulent adventurers of want. 
The rank luxuriance of this reign was a steaming hot-bed of 
peace, which proved to be the seed-plot of that revolution 
which was reserved for the unfortunate son. 

In the subsequent reign a poet seems to have taken a retro- 
spective view of the age of peace of James I. contemplating 
on its results in his own disastrous times — 



-States that never know 



A change but in their growth, which a long peace 
Hath brought unto perfection, are like steel, 
Which being neglected will consume itself 
With its own rust ; so doth Security- 
Eat through the hearts of states, while they are sleeping 
And lulled into false quiet. 

Nabb's Hannibal and Scipio. 



SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER. 

Thus the continued peace of James I. had calamities of its 
own ! Are we to attribute them to the king ? It has been 
usual with us, in the solemn expiations of our history, to con- 
vert the sovereign into the scape-goat for the people; the 
historian, like the priest of the Hebrews, laying his hands on 
Azazel,J the curses of the multitude are heaped on that de- 

* See Sir Edward Walker's "Hist. Discourses," p. 321 ; and Barring- 
ton's " Observ. on the Statutes," who says, "For this he deserves the 
highest praise and commendation from a nation of islanders." 
+ Harl. MSS. 646. 

X The Hebrew name, which Cal met translates Bouc Emissaire, and we 
' "Scape Goat y or rather Escape Goat. 



456 Character of James the First. 

voted head. And thus the historian conveniently solves all 
ambiguous events. 

The character of James I. is a moral phenomenon, a singu- 
larity of a complex nature. We see that we cannot trust to 
those modern writers who have passed their censures upon 
him, however just may he those very censures ; for when we 
look narrowly into their representations, as surely we find, 
perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes 
without some unexpected mitigating circumstance, or quali- 
fying abatement. At the moment of inflicting the censure, 
some recollection in opposition to what is asserted passes in 
the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they offer a dis- 
crepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be con- 
demned on a system, while his apology is only allowed the 
benefit of a parenthesis. 

How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher 
has been the common mark at which so many quivers have 
been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes 
were operating against him. The shifting positions into 
which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will 
unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be 
contradictions when operated on by external causes. 

James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each 
other. He was an antithesis in human nature — or even a 
solecism. We possess ample evidence of his shrewdness and 
of his simplicity ; we find the lofty regal style mingled with 
his familiar bonhommie. Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with 
the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception ; such 
gravity in sense, such levity in humour ; such wariness and 
such indiscretion ; such mystery and such openness — all these 
must have often thrown his Majesty into some awkward 
dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the 
theory of human affairs ; too witty or too aphoristic, he never 
seemed at a loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, 
ever to come to a decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk 
from the council-table ; he had that distaste for the routine 
of business which studious sedentary men are too apt to in- 
dulge ; and imagined that his health, which he said was the 
health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which 
he devoted to the chase ; Eoyston and Theobalds were more 
delectable than a deputation from the Commons, or the Court 
at Whitehall. 



Summary of his Character. 457 

It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced 
the people into the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebel- 
lions, and civil wars ; nor always oppressive taxation which 
has given rise to public grievances. Such were not the crimes 
of James the First. Amid the full blessings of peace, we find 
how the people are prone to corrupt themselves, and how a 
philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live 
without exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret — ■ 
unregarded, unremembered ! 



INDEX. 



Abernethy's opinion of enthusiasm, 
145. 

Abstraction of mind in great men, 
133—136. 

Actors, traits of character in great, 
137. 

Adrian VI., Pope, persecutes literary 
men, 18. 

Esthetic Critics, 282. 

Akenside on the nature of genius, 30. 

Alfieri, childhood of, 32 ; loneli- 
ness of his character, 96 ; excited 
by Plutarch's works, 141. 

Angelo, Michael, illustrates Dante, 
21; his ideas of intellectual labour, 
85 ; his reason for a solitary life, 
111 ; his picture of battle of Pisa 
destroyed by Bandinelli, 158 ; his 
elevated character, 252 ; his letter 
to Vasari describing the death of 
his servant, 375. 

Antipathies of men of genius, 160 — 
163. 

Anxiety of genius, 74 ; of authors 
and artists over their labours, 80 — 
88. 

Aristophanes, popularised by a false 
preface, 287. 

Art Friendships, 209 — 210. 

Artists, "Studies," or first thoughts, 
131; their mutual jealousies, 156 — 
158. 

Autobiography, its interest, 295. 

Barry the painter, his love of ancient 
literature, 23 ; his general enthu- 
siasm, 60 ; his rude eloquence, 107. 

Baillet and his catalogue, 352. 

Beattie describes the powerful ef- 
fect on himself of metaphysical 
study, 147. 

Birch, Dr., and Robertson the His- 
torian, 342 — 350. 

Boccaccio's friendship for Petrarch, 
212—214. 

Book Collectors, 227 — 231. 

Booksellers, the test of public opi- 
nion, 194. 



Bosius, his researches in the Roman 
catacombs, 144. 

Boyle on the disposition of child- 
hood, 31 ; his advertisement against 
visitors, n, 113; his idea of a lite- 
rary retreat, 188. 

Bruce the traveller disbelieved, 78. 

Buffon gives a reason for his fame, 
92. 

Buonaparte revives old military 
tactics, 266. 

Burns's diary of the heart, 71. 

Burton, his constitutional melan- 
choly, 220. 

Bonyan a self-taught genius, 60. 

Byron's loneliness of feeling, n., 96. 

Calumny frequently attacks genius, 

1S5. 

Cantenac and his autobiography, 
296. 

Caracct, the, their unfortunate jea- 
lousies, 157. 

Castagno murders a rival artist, 157. 

Charles V., friendship for Titian, 
253 ; Robertson's life of, 341. 

Chatelet, Madame de, a female 
philosopher and friend of Voltaire, 
95. 

Chatham, Earl of, his constancy of 
study, 9 6. 

Chenier a literarv fratricide, 173. 

Cicero on youthful influence, 32. 

Clarendon, his love of retirement, 
111. 

Coaches, their first invention ,359. 

Coal, its first use as fuel, 362. 

Coma Viigl, a disease produced by 
study, 147. 

Composition, its toils, 80 — 81. 

Contemporary criticism, frequently 
unjust, 75. 

Conversations of men of genius, 
99 — 109 ; those who converse well 
seldom write well, 104. 

Cotin, Abbe, troubled by wealth, 188. 

Cracherode, Rev. C. M., his collec- 
tions of art and literature, n., 13. 



460 



Index. 



Criticism not always just, 65 — 75. 

Currie, his idea of the power of 
genius, 26. 

Cuvier's discoveries in natural his- 
tory, 145. 

Dante, his great abstraction of mind, 
134. 

Deaths of literary men, 243. 

Depreciation, theory of, 160. 

Diaries, their value, 122. 

Disease induced by severe study, 147. 

Domenichino poisoned by rivals, 158. 

Domestic Novelties at first con- 
demned, 355—364. 

Domestic life of literary men, 173 — 
186. 

Dreams of eminent men, 127 — 128. 

Drouais an enthusiastic painter, 153. 

England and its tastes, 264. 

Family affection an incentive to 

genius, 179 — 182. 
Fenelon's early enthusiasm for 

Greece, 151. 
First Studies of great men, 55 — 59 ; 

first thoughts for great works, 129 

—133. 
Forks, when first used, 356. 
Franklin, Dr., notes the calming of 

the sea, 133 ; his influence on 

American manners, 272. 
Fuseli's imaginative power, 151. 

G axileo invents the pendulum, 132. 

Galvanism first discovered, 133. 

Gesner recommends a study of lite- 
rature to artists, 22 ; on enthusiasm, 
154 ; his wife a model for those of 
literary men, 206—208. 

Gleim and his portrait gallery, 211. 

Goldsmith contrasted with John- 
son, 294. 

Goldoni overworks his mind, 147. 

Government of the thoughts, 117. 

Gray's excitement in composing 
verse, 141. 

Gulbert, his great work on military 
tactics, 265. 

Habitual pursuits, their power 

over the mind, 302 — 304. 
Hallucinations of genius, 148 ; 

realities with some minds, 150. 
Haydn, his regulation of his time, 

92. 
Helmont's (Van) love of study, 152. 



Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, ques- 
tions the Deity as to the publication 
of his book, 148. 

Hobbes, theory to explain his terror, 
150. 

Hogarth, attacks on, n. 87. 

Hollis, his miserable celibacy, 201. 

Honours awarded literary men, 249 
— 258. 

Horne (Bishop), his love of literary 
labour, 135. 

Hume the historian, his irritability, 
86 ; unfitted for gay life, 99 ; gives 
his reason for literary labour, n. 
177 ; endeavours to correct Ro- 
bertson, 342. 

Hunter, Dr., fraternal jealousy, 156. 

Hypochondria, its cause and effect, 
150. 

Ideality defined, 137; its power, 

138—154. 
Incompleted books, 350 — 355. 
Industry of great writers, 125. 
Influence of authors, 267 — 270 ; 

273—277. 
Intellectual nobility, 250. 
Imitation in literature, 305 — 307. 
Irritability of genius, 70, 86 — 88. 
Isocrates' belief in native character, 

32. 

James I., a critical disquisition on the 

character of, 385 — 455. 
Julian, Emperor, anecdotes of, 97. 
Jealousy in art and literature, 154 — 

159 ; of honours paid to literary 

men, 251. 
Johnson, Dr., defines the literary 

character, 12 ; his moral dignity, 

192 ; his metaphysical loves, 200 ; 

anecdotes of him and Goldsmith, 

294. 
Juvenile works, their value, 67. 

Labour endured by great authors, 

75; a pleasure to some minds, 176 

—177. 
Letters in the vernacular idiom, 375 

—379. 
Linnaeus sensitive to ridicule, 75 ; 

honours awarded to, 191. 
Literary friendship, 209 — 217. 
Literature an avenue to glory, 248. 
Locke's simile of the human mind, 

25. 

Mannerists in literature, 293. 



Index. 



461 



Marco Polo ridiculed unjustly, n. 79. 

Matrimonial state in literature 
and art, 198 — 208. 

Mazzuchelli a great literary his- 
torian, 352. 

Meditation, value of, 129. 

Memory, as an art, 120, 122. 

Mendelssohn, Moses, his remarkable 
history, 61 — 64. 

Men of letters, their definition, 226 
—238. 

Metastasio a bad sportsman, 38 ; 
his susceptibility, 140. 

Milton, his high idea of the literary 
character, 12 ; his theory of genius, 
25 ; his love of study, 135 ; sacri- 
fices sight to poetry, 152. 

Miscellanists and their works, 282 
—286. 

Modes or study used by great men, 
125. 

Moliere, his dramatic career, 310 — 
325. 

Montaigne, his personal traits, 223. 

More, Dr., on enthusiasm of genius, 
149. 

Moreri devotes a life to literature, 
152. 

Mortimer the artist, his athletic 
exercises, 39. 

Muratori, his literary industry, 351. 

National tastes in literature, 260. 
Necessity, its influence on literature, 
193—194. 

Obscure births of great men, 248 

—249. 
Old age of literary men, 238 — 244. 

Peculiar habits of authors, 119 
—120. 

Peiresc, his early bias toward litera- 
ture, 234 ; his studious career, 235. 

Personal character differs from 
the literary one, 217 — 226. 

Petrarch's remarkable conversation 
on his melancholy, 68 ; his mode of 
life, 114. 

Pope, his anxiety over his Homer, 
81 ; severity of his early studies, 
147. 

Poussin fears trading in art, 193. 

Poverty of literary men, 186 ; some- 
times a choice, 1S8 — 190. 

Practical knowledge of life want- 
ing in studious men, 183 — 185. 

Prayers of great men, 146. 



Precieuses, 315—318 

Predisposition of the mind, 118. 

Prefaces, their interest, 286 ; their 
occasional falsehood, 287 ; vanity 
of authors in, 288; idle apologies 
in, 289 ; Dryden's interesting, 290. 

Prejudices, literary, 160 — 163. 

Public taste formed by public 
writers, 268. 

Racine, sensibility of, 83 ; 325 — 

332. 
Rambouillet, Hotel de, 315 — 317. 
Reading analyzed, 298 — 302. 
Recluse manners in great authors, 

98—99. 
Relics of men of genius, 255 — 258. 
Remuneration of literature, 194 

—195. 
Reshjences of literary men, 255 — 

257. 

Reynolds, Sir J., his " automatic 
system," 26 ; discovers its incon- 
sistencies, 27. 

Ridicule the terror of genius, 94. 

Rubertson the historian, 341 — 350. 

Roland, Madame, anecdote of the 
power of poetry on, 141. 

Romney, his anxiety over his picture 
of the Tempest, 81 — 82. 

Rousseau's expedient to endure 
society, 73 ; his domestic infelicity, 
175. 

Royal Society, attacks on, n. 14. 

Rubens' transcripts of the poets, 21. 

Sandwich, Lord, his first idea of a 
stratagem at sea, 132. 

Scudery, Mademoiselle, 316. 

Sensitiveness of genius, 72, 73, 78; 
139—140. 

Self-immolation of genius to la- 
bour, 152. 

Self-praise of genius, 1G2 — 170. 

Servants, a dissertation on, 364 — 
374. 

Shee, Sir M. A., relations of poetry 
and painting, n., 21. 

Shenstone, his early love, 199. 

Siddons, Mrs., anecdote of, 137. 

Singleness of genius, 245 — 247. 

Society, artificial, an injury to ge- 
nius, 90. 

Solitdde loved by men of genius, 
35—40; 109—115. 

Steam first discovered, 133. 

Studies of advanced life, 241 — 243. 

Sterne, anecdotes of, 332 — 340. 



462 



Index. 



Style and its peculiarities, 291 — 294. 
Susceptibility of men of genius, 170 

—172. 
Suggestions of one mind perfected 

by another, 275 — 276. 



Tasso uneasy in his labours, 84. 

Taylor, Dr. Brooke, his torpid melan- 
choly, 175. 

Temple, Sir W., his love of gardens, 
283. 

Theoretical history, 342. 

Thomson, his sensitiveness to grand 
poetry, 142 ; irritability over false 
criticisms, 65. 

Tobacco, its introduction to Eng- 
land, 362. 

Toothpicks, origin of, 358. 

Townley Gallery of Sculpture, n., 
13. 

Troubadours, their influence, 285. 



Umbrellas, their history, 358. 
Utilitarianism and its narrow view 

of literature, 15. 
Universality of genius, 244. 



Tan Praun refuses to part with his 

collection to an emperor, 229. 
Vernet sketches in a storm, 144. 
Vers de Societe, 308 — 310 
Vindictiveness of genius, 170 — 173. 
Visionaries of genius, 148. 
Visitors disliked by literary men, 

112—113. 
Voltaire, anecdote of his visit to a 

country house, 95 ; his universal 

genius, 245. 

Walpole's, Horace, opinion of Gray, 
91 ; of Burke, ib. 

Watson neglects research in his pro- 
fessorship, 17. 

Werner's discoveries in science, 145. 

Wilkes desirous of literary glory, 17. 

Wit sometimes mechanical, 126. 

Wives of literary men, 202 — 208. 

Works intended, but not executed, 
123. 

Wood, Anthony, sacrifices all to 
study, 152. 

Young the poet, his want of sym- 
pathy, 185. 
Youth of great men, 34 — 54. 



THE END. 



Ur 



